1992 was a really great year for movies. Batman Returns, Wayne’s World, A Few Good Men, Army of Darkness and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Okay, so maybe not that last one. Still, ’92 had some really great flicks on the big screen. One such film was the basketball drama/comedy, White Men Can’t Jump.

I got to see this film when it was released on VHS. I even remember seeing the VHS cover on the shelf of the rental shop. I knew nothing about the film and only picked it out because I used to watch Cheers a lot and there was Woody Harrelson on the cover. Plus, I did play a bit of basketball in school. I never followed the sport at all, I just liked playing it. So yeah, White Men Can’t Jump was one of those random picks, just plucked from the VHS rental shop on a whim. From a random pick-up at a VHS rental place to one of my all-time favourite films.

Right now, I’m going to take a look at the rather small White Men Can’t Jump franchise and seeing as there is a recent remake. Yup, I’ll be looking at that too. Tipping-off with the original.

White Men Can’t Jump (1992)

As I said, the original was released back in 1992. Written and directed by Ron Shelton and starring one of the greatest double acts of the ’90s, Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) is the white, goofy-looking chump who finds himself in debt to some local gangsters, the Stucci brothers. Needing to raise money to pay off his debt and buy a nice dress for his girlfriend Gloria (Rosie Perez) in case she ever gets on the gameshow Jeopardy!, Billy hits the basketball courts around Los Angeles and starts to do a bit of hustling.

When Sidney Deane (Wesley Snipes) picks him out to play some ball, he thinks picking the white goofy-looking chump will be an easy win. However, the chump is more than a match and Billy ends up beating Sidney not once, but twice. Realising that he has been hustled, Sidney meets with Billy and suggests that they team up to make some serious money. The two come up with a plan to have Sidney be the experienced basketball player who will challenge people on the court, while Billy will do his white, goofy-looking chump act and fool the opponents into picking him to be Sidney’s partner.

The duo do well and start to make some decent cash with their hustle for a while. With all of their cash on the line, Sidney double-crosses Billy and hustles him. Now penny-less and with a very pissed-off girlfriend, Billy is forced to team up with Sidney to play in a local basketball tournament with a $5,000 prize. Of course they win, split the winnings… and that is when Billy bets his half against Sidney to prove that he can dunk a basket. Billy loses, proving that white men can’t jump (title). With the relationship all but over, Billy asks Sidney for a favour (which he will owe Sidney for) and gets Gloria on Jeopardy!, she wins and makes some serious cash and gives some to Billy so that he can buy some new clothes and get a job.

Sidney has his home broken into and wants to move his family out of the shithole he is living in. What with Billy now owing Sidney a favour, Billy is asked if he has any money to go up against two legends on the basketball court, The King and The Duck. Using the money that Gloria gave him, she walks out while Billy and Sidney go and play basketball. They win but Gloria is gone and Billy has won, but lost. The Stucci brothers have tracked down Billy, he pays his debts with some of his winnings and is now free. Billy and Sidney walk off into the sunset hinting at a possible return/sequel that never happened.

In many ways, White Men Can’t Jump is a bit of a mess of a film. There are multiple stands of story that really don’t seem as if they should work together. You’ve got a goofy-looking basketball hustler teaming up with a sly ball player, and that element makes sense. Then you have a sub-plot involving gangsters, another sub-plot of Billy’s fiery girlfriend and her Jeopardy! obsession. Something going on with Sidney’s wife and family. Double-crossing and more… and this is just a film about playing street basketball. I’ve watched ‘deeper’ films with less of a plot and fewer sub-plots. However, even with all of these multiple strands going on, they all mesh together to make a highly entertaining flick. As basic as White Men Can’t Jump is on the surface, it is also brilliantly written by Ron Shelton.

The dialogue is memorable and I still quote lines from this film over 30 years later. The trash-talk and all of those ‘Yo Momma’ quips.  The music is astounding and features such awesome artists as Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin and James Brown. Then you have the basketball action itself, wonderfully shot and it clearly has both Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson actually playing basketball too. In fact, the basketball trainers who worked with Sniper and Harrelson said that they were so skilled that they could’ve played for an NCAA Division III team.

White Men Can’t Jump just works. It’s funny, it has drama. The characters feel real and the story (even with all the strands) is engaging. There’s a fantastic White Men Can’t Jump 30th Anniversary Reunion (see the truncated version below) that is well worth watching and it goes to show how much passion was involved in making it. But do seek out the full version, it’s a brilliant watch.

There was almost a sequel too. Ron Shelton wanted to make it and everyone involved wanted to come back and do a White Men Can’t Jump 2. However, in 1997 Shelton sued the film’s distributor (20th Century) over unpaid royalties connected to the film’s profits. Ron Shelton won $9.8 million and then cut all ties with 20th Century and refused to work with them ever again. The thing is that, at the time, Shelton had been working on a sequel. All of the legal issues with 20th Century meant that he had to abandon the idea of making another film.

White Men Can’t Jump (Video Game)

The film’s massive success meant that options to make more money from the IP began to emerge. Nike even made Billy Hoyle and Sidney Deane inspired basketball shoes. In 1995, White Men Can’t Jump got the video game treatment. It kind of made sense too as in 1993, the first NBA Jam was released and proved that there was a fan base for a fast-paced, arcade-style basketball game. Seeing as the film had done very well at the cinema and was also proving a hit on the home market at the time, getting a video game based on the movie was all but inevitable.

Developed by High Voltage Software for the Atari Jaguar, you already know that this isn’t going to turn out well. The Jaguar was a bit of a disaster of a console and only has about 3 good games on it, White Men Can’t Jump wasn’t one of those 3. I think that claiming that the game of White Men Can’t Jump is based on the film is kind of a lie. It has the licence, but other than the name and the fact that it involves playing basketball, there are zero connections.

Nothing from the film is in the game. There is no Billy Hoyle and Sidney Deane. There is no story from the film to speak of. This is just a basketball game that is called White Men Can’t Jump. You get two different play modes, a vs mode for some two-player action and a tournament mode. The latter is the main event where you just play two-on-two basketball against various opponents for money. There is a bit of a plot here in that you are lent $500 by some local gangsters (it’s almost like the film but not at all) and have to raise $5,000 to enter the big tournament. So you hit the courts and start hustling.

There are 15 teams to pick from, all with 2 players and each player has their own stats.  Even with those combined 30 characters… none of them are from the film. Never mind no Billy Hoyle and Sidney Deane, none of the secondary characters from the film are even here. There is a bit of simple and non-swearing trash-talk as you play, and that is about as close to the film as you’re going to get. It has some mild trash-talk.

The gameplay is very stiff, sluggish and a far cry from the likes of NBA Jam. Even with a total of 30 characters, they’re all basically the same and the stats don’t make a heap of difference. White Men Can’t Jump isn’t one of the worst games on the Jaguar but it is hardly worth playing either. It makes zero sense that it has the movie licence as it has nothing to do with the movie. They could have called this anything other than White Men Can’t Jump and nobody would be any the wiser. Often regarded as ‘one of the worst games ever’, I do that that title is a bit strong. This is far from being one of the worst, but it’s still not very good.

The White Men Can’t Jump game did come with a ‘free’ Team Tap for the Jaguar. A peripheral that allowed you to plus four controllers into the console and play some multiplayer. Do you know how many Jaguar games used this feature? Two, White Men Can’t Jump and NBA Jam Tournament Edition. Of the two, stick with NBA Jam, it’s not a great port but it is far more playable.

White Men Can’t Jump (2023)

I suppose that it was inevitable, the remake had to happen at some point. I was quite surprised to learn that this film’s story was co-written by Ron Shelton, the guy behind the original. I was surprised because Shelton said that he would never work with
20th Century ever again following the previously mentioned lawsuit of him not being paid fairly. And yes, the production company behind this remake is 20th Century.

So this remake does follow a similar story as the original, but still with enough differences to separate it. Jeremy (Jack Harlow) is your white man for this version. Jeremy is a personal basketball trainer who also sells questionable detox drinks. Once a great prospect of a college basketball player, Jeremy suffered a double anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury which destroyed his potential future career as a basketball player. Looking to raise enough money to fix his ACL injury by stem cells, he does a bit of hustling.

Crossing paths with Kamal (Sinqua Walls), the black man of this film, an amateur ball player who had a promising future, but something went wrong. That something is hinted at the beginning of the film, but we do learn more as the plot is revealed. Anyway, Jeremey hustles Kamal out of some cash and just like the original, the two team up and start to hustle players on the street to make some money so that they can buy into the big tournament. Building to a climax of that basketball tournament to win the $500,000 grand prize. Yes, $500,000.

So, I have to be fully honest and tell you that when I saw the trailer for this film, I was ready to begin the hate train. The original White Men Can’t Jump is a fantastic flick and while I am not against remakes, there are some films that I feel really do not need the remake treatment. I went into this with the preconception that I would be ready to tear into it and really wanted to do an angry review too. However, by the time the credits rolled, I found that I actually enjoyed it.

Let’s get the main bit out of the way first. No, this is nowhere near as great as the original and the two leads are certainly no Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. But, I still liked both Sinqua Walls and Jack Harlow. They work well together and do have good chemistry. The plot is unremarkable, but there are a few instances that lift this from being a cookie-cutter remake. Some classic scenes from the original have been recreated but with a new twist. The whole ‘You can’t hear Jimi’ thing is given a new spin as the roles are reversed as it is the white guy Jeremy trying to belittle Kamal, the black guy’s taste in music. When Kamal admits to liking Ed Sheeran (instead of Jimi Hendrix as in the original), the jokes do come.

Do you remember the Raymond scene in the original? You know the one where he is hustled and says that he is going to his car to get his gun and shoot everyone. That gets an ‘update’ here too and now involves a flamethrower. Yeah, it is ridiculously over-the-top… but it is funny. That is the key with this remake, it is funny at times. However, it really does lack the heart that the original had. The characters are just nowhere near as interesting or as loveable. Still, I did enjoy both Jeremy and Kamal and the budding relationship between them was an enjoyable enough watch. You even get a bit more ‘depth’ as the two have histories that get explored in the film.

This is not a carbon copy of the original and the ending (while not a great surprise) does not go the way I thought it would. The trash-talking is a bit more ‘PC friendly’ and yes, this does feel diluted over the original film. Even so, White Men Can’t Jump is not a terrible remake. I think that it is worth a watch, but just don’t expect the greatness that came with the original. I don’t think that I’ll be quoting from this film in 30 years but it is a fun way to kill a couple of hours. This remake can’t hear Jimi, but it can listen to Ed Sheeran all it wants.