|
The annual appearance of a Spike Lee film offers assurance that there will be at least one movie a year depicting black people as real folks, not the shuckin' and jivin' characters portrayed in the Wayans brothers' flicks. Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever and Malcolm X bluntly opened viewers' minds to social issues rarely discussed in public forums. Lee's current film, He Got Game, attempts to address the perverting of basketball into a corrupt, modern-day plantation system that uses the talents of predominantly black athletes to reap billions of dollars for team owners. Jesus Shuttlesworth, played by Milwaukee Bucks guard Ray Allen, is the embodiment of today's high-school stars who are pressured by drooling NCAA coaches, agents and NBA franchises to help the program win championships or take the loot available in the pro game. He Got Game intends to provide insight into the conniving and selfish motivations of family and friends that young athletes must see through to make the best decision. Despite the timeliness and relevance of the story, Lee's predictability--he uses the same camera techniques and actors in all his movies--sinks the film in a pool of mediocrity. The screenplay is the most confusing element of the movie. Lee adopts extremely unbelievable situations to propel the plot. The focal point of He Got Game is the strained relationship between Jesus and his father, Jake (Denzel Washington). Jake is in prison serving time for murdering his wife, leaving Jesus in charge of his younger sister, Mary. In order to get Jesus to attend Big State, the governor of New York makes an impossible deal with Jake: He gets a week's furlough to persuade his son to sign a letter of intent, and if he's successful, his sentence will be commuted. He Got Game is bogged down by Lee's many muddled tangents. Two stereotypical gold-digging characters--Jesus' girlfriend Lala (Rosario Dawson) and his uncle Bubba (Bill Nunn)--are poorly developed. The inane scenes between Jake and Dakota, a two-bit hooker played by Milla Jovovich, are pointless. At times, Jake appears to be more concerned with getting laid than trying to communicate with his son and obtain his own freedom. Lee uses the subplots to drive the present-day action of He Got Game and relies on flashbacks to detail Jake's harsh drive to mold Jesus into the best basketball player. The best of the flashbacks is the vivid portrayal of the circumstances that led to Jake's crime. These scenes communicate the real emotion of the script and could have been the bulk of the action. Lee's love of basketball is evident in He Got Game; the court scenes are actual games, a first in a feature film. But the pure delight of the one-on-one battle between Jake and Jesus is diminished by Lee's tendency to overload the senses with poor attempts at surreal shots and preachy, moralistic messages. Lee missed the issue of the NBA being a new form of slavery as he concentrated on transmitting his arrogance through the film. His opportunity to slam one down sadly turned into a missed layup. |
