Sports (pt. III)

White Men Can’t Jump

Swimfan

Howdy, dear reader, and happy New Year! When I began this movie-watching excursion back in March of 2020, I never predicted that I would watch nearly 400 films, or that it would inspire me to pitch my film writing to publications, and I certainly didn’t think that an indoorsy, un-athletic gal like myself would ever get to a “Sports (pt. III)” double feature but here we are: 394 films later, at least six of which are sports movies. As I always say, while I may not personally enjoy watching or partaking in sports, I can zoom out of myself enough to understand the importance and draw of sports. And the more sports movies I watch, the greater my understanding and sympathy for sports becomes. After seeing The Iron Claw in theaters (twice…) I have a newfound appreciation for the sport of wrestling—the drag-caliber pageantry, the Shakespearean levels of tragedy, and the bodacious beauty of those hunky folks who participate in the ring, to name a few impressive aspects. So in an attempt to further my understanding and awareness of sports without watching any sports at all, and to, as always, celebrate my sport-loving dad’s impending birthday, let’s rally around for another set of sports movies. Up first is a film who’s success resulted in a video game adaptation, a collaboration with Nike, two soundtracks, and a 2022 remake: the classic 1992 basketball movie White Men Can’t Jump. The last basketball movie I watched was Hoosiers, but White Men Can’t Jump follows the action on outdoor courts—specifically in one of my favorite places on Earth, Venice Beach, California. The film stars Wesley Snipes as Sidney Deane, a husband, father, and businessman who frequents the courts on Venice Beach, tearing up competition from strangers and friends, trash talking the whole way through. Sidney practically owns these courts, until the day Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) shows up. Billy dresses like your typical try-hard white boy chump—out of fashion shoes, long basketball shorts, tacky t-shirts that have dolphins on them, and an embarrassingly-backwards cap—but what the other men on the court don’t know is that Billy is a former college basketball player, and can smoke just about anyone he plays against. When he beats the talented Sidney in a game of one-on-one, Sidney realizes the hustle Billy is playing, and follows Billy back to his shabby apartment with his charmingly bossy girlfriend Gloria (Rosie Perez.) Sidney’s a bit of a gambler and a hustler as well, so he’s not mad at Billy, but he does want to go into business together. After some more trash-talking, racially-charged disses, and a creative unending plethora of “yo mama” jokes, Billy reluctantly agrees to hustle other basketball courts with Sidney—pretending to not know one another then playing other basketball bros in two-on-two games for wagers. Their scheme is fairly solid, with Sidney’s natural ability and connections on the courts, and Billy’s unskilled appearance that effectively throws off their fellow players when he shoots so many baskets. There are several other side stories in White Men Can’t Jump, some more fleshed out than others, but one of the storylines I appreciated most was Billy’s girlfriend, Gloria’s, who’s own plan to get money does not involve sports, but the gameshow Jeopardy! Just hearing Rosie Perez list the random and wild facts of the world she was learning was entertaining enough, and her fascination with “foods that start with the letter ‘Q’” was enough to make Jeopardy! create that as a real category in 1997. I’ve always been a Rosie Perez fan, particularly when she plays a headstrong and funny firecracker of a character, which she typically does—but here she was just as frenetically funny as she was genuinely sweet. Her scenes with Woody Harrelson showcased a legitimately hot chemistry between the two, and writer/director Ron Shelton gifted her with some of the best, most shockingly deep lines of dialogue surrounding sports like, “Winning and losing is one big organic globule from which one extracts what one needs.” Rosie the philosopher kind of blew my mind, but she delivered these moments with the same ease in which she says “motherfucker.” White Men Can’t Jump is so much more than a basketball movie, it is more than another vehicle for Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, and Rosie Perez to showcase their respective star quality(ies?) and become bigger stars—it is one of those rare movies, made in the right time with the right people, where stereotyping exists not to try to prove or disprove any cultural beliefs about white or black people, but rather to underscore the absurdity of such thought processes. It is one of the only sports movies, that I’ve seen at least, to discuss the discrepancies between the experiences of black players and white players, without relying upon a tired white-savior narrative or an unnecessary fish-out-of-water trope. While of course dated in many respects, the 1990s of it all is part of the overwhelming charm of this movie, from the impeccably colorful and revealing athleisure fashion, to the catchy soundtrack, to the evolved-sitcom-like cadence in which these characters engaged in conversation. All three leads are at their hottest, and Woody Harrelson’s hair was at its least balding, which was lovely to see. I am so bored by sports that I typically can’t even be bothered to be curiously confused by them, but the energy and attitude of White Men Can’t Jump was just too fun and silly to not be entertaining. Speaking of sports movies that are too fun and silly to not be entertaining, the next film that I watched came out about a decade later, who’s vibe and tone couldn’t be further from the brightly-colored playfulness of the last film: the 2002 teen psychological thriller Swimfan. Now, as I often say over and over again, I am a proud feminist. But, like many millennial/gen-z cusp kids who grew up with the pulpy and dramatic films of the turn of the last century, I also love films about crazy women. A confusing dichotomy, I know, but I can’t help being perplexed and astounded by the likes of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Alicia Silverstone in The Crush, and the entire cast of Girl, Interrupted, so I’ve been needing to see Swimfan for quite sometime. Swimfan is perhaps even less about the sport in its title than any other sport movie I’ve watched thus far, but that’s not necessarily why I enjoyed it so much. Right out of the gate this film is overly dramatic, taking itself too seriously, and shrouded in a blue-tinted darkness and Courier-font that thrived in 2002, so I was hooked from the very start. Swimfan follows Jesse Bradford as Ben Cronin—the star athlete of his high school’s swim team who hopes to gain a scholarship at Stanford. But like other fictional high school good boy sports stars, Ben does a LOT. He’s a great student, he works as a nurse (or perhaps some sort of candy striper) at the hospital where his mom works, he has a similarly smart and sweet girlfriend named Amy (Shiri Freda Appleby), and he’s already lived out his bad boy phase (I guess in middle school??) doing drugs and stealing—until going to a juvie where there was a pool, and he was saved by swimming. Naturally. Everything is going swimmingly now that his life is back on track, he’s the best on the team, and his girlfriend and his buddies love him, until new girl Madison (Erika Christensen) arrives. Ben is under enough stress, with the impending swim meet where Stanford scouts will be attending, and the fact that Amy is planning to go to school in Rhode Island, but when Madison shows up in his life, things take a turn for the dark and disturbing. After he has to save Madison not once but twice, the tension between these two grows, as does their mutual curiosity. Madison is a curly-haired girly with just enough mystique to pique the interests of all the boys in school—she’s from New York, she’s bold, and she’s got a seemingly haunted past. Ben bonds with her over this, stating how when he’s swimming, all of the chaos of the world just floats away. And Madison says the same thing happens for her when she plays the cello. She knows just the right things to say, and thoroughly seduces Ben in one of the most peculiar and somehow masculine ways I’ve witnessed in a psycho-sexual thriller. She’s confident without being cocky, and she’s smart without appearing too calculated, but when Madison successfully entrances Ben and has sex with him in a pool, her mystique shifts to menacing. Madison and Ben agree not to tell anyone that they’ve slept together, and when Amy “introduces” Ben to Madison at a party, the two seem to be playing convincingly dumb. But this doesn’t stop Madison from torturing Ben—leaving a pair of her underwear in his car, placing flowers in his locker, and spamming his inbox with nearly one hundred messages and naked photos of herself. Her username and email? Swimfan, of course. And her obsession is not just with Ben, but with making everyone in his life miserable and suspicious of Ben. I would say that Madison is nothing more than a teen iteration of Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction, but I think Madison may even have that crazy broad beat in terms of romantically-motivated revenge. While Swimfan implemented an expected-amount of cheesiness and unfairness towards its female leads, my only real complaint with this film is how it is edited. There would be extended sequences of characters reacting in utter disbelief at something, taken from different angles, all cut frantically together, that only made the stakes sillier and the consequences seem inconsequential, but I hate to shit on the editing too much because one of the only female members of this crew was editor Sarah Flack—who has since shown her skills in better films like Marie Antoinette and Priscilla. The editing was, of course, not the only painfully early 2000s aspect of Swimfan, there was also a myriad of unintentionally funny music, and just an overall odd juxtaposition between the performers that were acting like proper high schoolers and Erika Christensen as Madison—who was rightfully operating as if she were the femme fatale in an old noir. [And I’m not at all defending Madison’s unhinged behavior, but when Ben finally puts his foot down and asks her if she’s gonna leave him alone, to which she softly replies yes, the fact that he responds with “good girl” was not helping. That seems just a bit confusing to say in a sexy, smoldering voice to the girl who’s stalking you, but what do I know!] Even though her wardrobe was beyond questionable, Madison was a compelling and tantalizing character, and watching her become steadily more crazed was delightful, no matter how bizarre the pacing, dialogue, and overall vibe was throughout. Swimfan is as much of a sports movie as I am a sports fan, so I don’t blame the actual sports fans for being let down by this one, but still, its 15% on Rotten Tomatoes seems a bit harsh. I really enjoyed both of tonight’s sports movies which just goes to show how rewarding it can be to step outside of your comfort zone—in life, in your movie-watching, in the physical activities that you partake in. Good huddle, team, I’m proud of y’all for making it to 2024 and thankful if you’re still sitting on the sidelines, watching movies with me! Break!