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Crossover

2006, Movie, PG-13, 95 mins

Crossover: Review

CROSSOVER
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Detroit-born independent filmmaker Preston A. Whitmore II's astonishingly inept drama revolves around the high-stakes world of streetball — the down and dirty, defiantly amateur heir to the Harlem Globetrotters' tradition of on-court showboating — and the efforts of two teenagers to resist its flash and cash temptations. Smooth-talking Vaughn (improv-comedy legend Wayne Brady) left his job as a Los Angeles sports promoter to grab the brass ring in Detroit, where he owns his own swanky nightclub and makes book on the razzle-dazzle streetball games he stages in an abandoned railroad station. Vaugh's long-distance girlfriend, Nikki (Kristen Wilson), who recently made partner at her L.A. law firm, disapproves and accuses him of taking advantage of the young men who play on his two underground teams, Platinum and Enemy of the State. Vaughn's star protege, Jewelz (real-life streetball player Philip Champion), plays for Platinum, but Vaughn spots the naturally talented Noah Cruise (Wesley Jonathan) when he steps into one game as a personal favor to his best friend, Tech (Anthony Mackie), and sees a star in the raw. Vaughn tries to recruit him, but Cruise isn't biting: He has a basketball scholarship to UCLA — a scholarship he stands to lose if it ever came out that he's been playing streetball — and intends to use it to attend medical school. Tech, on the other hand, is fresh out of prison and struggling to get his GED; he'd give anything to have Cruise's natural ability and the opportunities it affords him. Their volatile friendship is further complicated by two girls: down-to-earth, aspiring makeup artist Eboni (Alecia Fears), who winds up with Tech, and her scheming best friend Vanessa (America's Top Model winner Eva Pigford), who puts the moves on the naive and honorable Cruise. You can't fault the film's message that getting an education is a better path out of poverty than gambling on hitting it big in sports. But Whitmore delivers his message with all the subtlety of a crusading high-school guidance counselor, and surrounds his finger-wagging moral with wooden acting (Pigford is especially awful), characters written so unevenly that it's impossible to figure them out from one scene to another, and a raft of tricky editing, camera angles and special effects apparently designed to confer street cred on the film's sorry cliches. Overall, it's a lamentable performance for a filmmaker with a string of credits ranging from TV's Malcolm & Eddie (1996-2000) to CIVIL BRAND (2002). leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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