Uncle Drew and Bigfoot have two things in common: They’re both tall, and confirmed sightings are very rare.
It wasn’t always so. (Well, at least as far as Uncle Drew is concerned.) In the late ’60s, Uncle Drew was a Harlem streetball legend. An unstoppable basketball force. Why, one old photo even shows Uncle Drew attacking the rim with a basketball in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other.
In 1968, Uncle Drew and his teammates breezed to the finals of the inaugural Rucker Classic Tournament (named after a popular streetball court in the city). The local ballers’ coronation was a foregone conclusion … until something happened the night before the big game. Something involving a young woman. Something that made one of Uncle Drew’s teammates very, very angry.
Uncle Drew never showed for the big game. He simply disappeared before the game. Poof. A legend in his prime and in his time was suddenly nowhere to be found. The only thing he left behind? Rumors. Questions. And ever-growing tales of his streetball domination.
In the 50 years since, no urban legend on the streets of Harlem has ever equaled that of the fabled, mythical, mysterious Uncle Drew.
Fast-forward to 2018. Scrappy young coach Dax Winslow has his sights set on claiming the 50th Annual Rucker Classic Tournament crown. The prize has grown from citywide bragging rights to a cool $100,000. And his girlfriend, Jess, knows exactly how she’d spend that kind of bling.
Dax’s childhood nemesis turned coach, a guy named Mookie, has managed his own teams to Rucker glory for a decade. But this year’s gonna be different. This year, Dax has an unstoppable offensive weapon: Casper Jones. This year, Dax is going to put Mookie in his place, vanquish his demons from the past and take big steps toward happily ever after with Jess.
Everything is going according to plan. That’s when Casper defects to Mookie’s squad, a move the rest of Dax’s players follow. The same day, Jess kicks him to the curb, kicks him out of her apartment and joins Mookie’s team (so to speak), too.
Dax? Well, now he’s got nothing: no star, no team, no girl, no home. Just shame.
Desperately searching for new players, Dax makes his way to the streets to do some scouting and recruiting. And one destiny-filled day he finds himself watching a pickup match between a brash young shooter and … a really old guy. A geriatric former baller who insists he can still school the whippersnapper—never mind that said oldster can barely walk.
Mockery fills the court—right up to the moment the old dude proves that the legend of Uncle Drew is true.
And maybe, just maybe, Dax can convince Uncle Drew to take care of his unfinished business from 50 years ago.
Uncle Drew is game, as long as he can recruit his (literally) old teammates: Lights, Boots, Big Fella and Preacher. But it turns out Uncle Drew’s got some other unfinished business he’ll need to address, too.
Uncle Drew is a stereotypical underdog sports story, with Dax, as well as his team of old players, both embodying underdog status (albeit in different ways). They have adversity to overcome, of course—not the least of which is a spontaneous scrimmage in with Uncle Drew’s crew gets schooled by a high school girls’ basketball team.
But there are some deeper currents of meaning, too.
Uncle Drew, we learn, made a bad choice on the eve of the 1968 championship, which hurt his teammate, Big Fella, badly. Fifty years later, Uncle Drew is still hesitant to apologize to Big Fella, who won’t participate fully until his former teammate says he’s sorry. Preacher admonishes his stubborn friend, “You really wanna make this right? Stop running from the truth,” advice Uncle Drew eventually heeds.
Meanwhile, Dax is haunted by memories of Mookie blocking a would-be game-winning shot in junior high decades before. It’s the reason he’s a coach, not a player, the reason he sometimes lets cowardice rule his decisions. Uncle Drew recognizes Dax’s cravenness and challenges him not to spend 50 years shackled to a bad moment from the past, just as he’s done. Uncle Drew asks Dax, “You think you’re the only one who made that one mistake that defined your whole life?” We also hear the phrase, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” an admonishment to step up and take a risk.
Uncle Drew and his friends are all in their twilight years, though some are doing better than others. Boots struggles the most. He’s wheelchair-bound and doesn’t speak. But when his old teammates show up to recruit him, it reinvigorates the man. In fact, that’s true off all five older players. Playing basketball and being on a team gives their lives renewed meaning, and we see that their friendships thrive once more. A young woman named Maya often tends to Boots, her grandfather, and she’s amazed at his transformation when given a sense of purpose and fellowship with friends.
Uncle Drew emphasizes that what matters isn’t the tourney’s prize money, but the love they feel for the game. He says that successful teams are comprised of unselfish players who help each other and who understand one another’s strengths—a value he believes is largely lost when it comes to contemporary teams (like Mookie’s) that are built around one primary star (Casper). Elsewhere, someone say of the relationship between age and playing ball, “You don’t stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.”
The film also emphasizes the importance of family. We learn that Dax was an orphan, which contributed to his insecurities. In the end, he sees his team as something more like a family. [Spoiler Warning] When one character has a heart attack, the team uses the money from the tournament to pay for his hospital stay.
Uncle Drew also focuses on Preacher’s marriage to Betty Lou. She doesn’t want him playing, and she spends about half of the movie chasing him down. But when push comes to shove, Betty Lou supports him and steps into an important role herself in how things ultimately turn out.
Preacher is aptly named—because that’s what he is and does. When Uncle Drew and Dax show up at his church (The Calm Before the Storm Divine Ministries) to recruit him, he’s in the middle of, ahem, enthusiastically baptizing an infant. The over-the-top scene finds him using all sorts of basketball terminology (holy dunking and whatnot) as he treats the infant like a basketball by rolling him around his back, holding him up in the air, etc. Dax is horrified and puts a stop to it. He ends up getting baptized (and submerged) repeatedly in the name of Jesus instead of the infant. We also see a stained glass window depicting a black Jesus at Preacher’s church.
When Betty Lou objects to her husband joining a basketball team, the couple argues by quoting Scripture references to each other, including Psalm 62:1-2 and Ephesians 5:22. We also hear earnest exclamations of “praise the Lord,” “oh Lord,” and “hallelujah,” as well as mentions of Jesus. An opponent asks Preacher who he is, and he responds, “I just came back from hell, whoopin’ the devil’s a–.”
At one point, Lights—who’s legally blind—ends up driving Uncle Drew’s bright orange, ’70s-era van. Preacher exclaims in a dramatic moment, “Lord Jesus, take the wheel!” Someone says, “Preacher, you can’t always pray away your problems.” A character is referred to as “the black messiah.” We hear a passing reference to the Last Supper. Jess calls Mookie the “ghost of white boy past.” Uncle Drew says of basketball, “It’s sacred to me.”
Big Fella runs a martial arts dojo that’s full of Eastern-tinged artifacts, including Buddha statues and a Chinese yin-yang symbol on his outfit. He meditates in one scene, droning something like, “Ommm.”
The movie implies that the guys were quite promiscuous back in the day, with the back of Uncle Drew’s van named “the boom boom room.” (We hear that portion of the vehicle referenced repeatedly.) The heart of the controversy between Uncle Drew and Big Fella has to do with the former having an affair with the latter’s girlfriend just before the big game.
The guys joke repeatedly about Viagra and make crude references to the male anatomy. There’s a prostate quip. Uncle Drew hands a bag of mixed nuts to someone, saying, “Hold my nuts.” Someone talks about “man junk,” and Mookie mocks Dax by calling him “D–ks.” One of the guys tries to learn how to use Tinder, and brags about swiping right on every potential online partner. Guys gush about former sexual conquests, with the phrase “your mother” and “sister” turning up jokingly a couple of times. Song lyrics reference two people “between the sheets.”
Maya wears revealing tops, as does Jess. Women dancing sensually at a club are dressed provocatively as well. One of the guys says of a woman’s suggestive grinding, “She’s gon’ get him pregnant dancing like that.”
It’s implied that Dax and Jess are living together. After she kicks him out, Jess quickly invites Mookie to take his place. Dax comes to Jess’s door at one point, only to have Mookie and Jess open it wearing towels (he’s shirtless, we see her bare shoulders) and talking suggestively about what they’ve been doing in the shower together. Mookie makes a crude gag about Jess’ anatomy.
A male character’s hospital gown comes undone in back, twice revealing his bare backside. Outtakes during the credits feature what looks to be the beginning of a sex tape between two characters, though both are partially clothed. A man and woman kiss.
Some on-court action gets fairly heated. Someone has a heart attack. (We see that character in the hospital.) We hear about a player breaking his ankle. There’s one reckless car chase (with the nearly blind Lights driving).
We hear one s-word, one unfinished exclamation of “mother—” and one misuse of Jesus’ name. There are two or three abuses of God’s name. “D–n” is uttered about a dozen times.” “H—” and “a–” are used about half a dozen or so times each. We hear a couple of crude slang terms for the male anatomy. Someone says “freaking.”
A scene takes place in a dance club, and we see characters drinking various alcoholic beverages.
Dax is quite short, earning him a variety of mocking monikers from different characters.
Dax, who works at a Foot Locker store, buys expensive basketball hightops for Casper and the other team members in an attempt to secure their loyalty. After Casper and Co. switch teams, Dax shows up at their practice and tries to yank the shoes off Casper’s feet.
Boots leaves the assisted-care facility where he lives without asking permission.
Is Uncle Drew’s water bottle half full or half empty? I think the best answer is yes.
This basketball comedy featuring former and current pro basketball stars such as Kryie Irving (in the title role), Shaquille O’Neal (as Big Fella), Reggie Miller (as Lights), Chris Webber (as Preacher), Nate Robinson (as Boots) and Lisa Leslie (as Betty Lou) has some nice moments and messages. In addition to the fun of watching a bunch of supposedly old guys put a hurt on their younger competition, we get some redemptive themes emphasizing the importance of relinquishing our fears and mistakes, as well as taking responsibility for past choices that hurt others.
As far as PG-13 comedies go today, this one is relatively restrained with regard to its profanity usage—even eschewing the one or two f-words that are almost guaranteed in most movies like this one these days.
That said, we still get Viagra jokes, a bare bum, winking nods to promiscuity and a fair bit of mild profanity, even if harsher language is largely avoided.
The result? An occasionally inspiring basketball lark that, while not as nasty as it could have been, still includes enough content to consider carefully before taking your shot with it.
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
