Basket Academy

Rebound/2005/***

Main Stars: Martin Lawrence Oren Williams

Breckin Meyer

Martin Lawrence definitely brought the laughs in this movie. There were other people that were funny but mainly Martin Lawrence was. This movie is all about basketball and barely anything else. Roy McCormick (Martin Lawrence) gets fired from coaching college basketball because of his maniacal temper tantrums. Now he has to coach 13 year old kids in a middle school. At first, it was bad for Roy but then he became more patient and better to the kids. It's difficult to explain why I liked this movie but it was just funny and I really was into it for some reason. Movie directed by Steve Carr.

The filmmakers in Rebound diligently stick to the prescribed "kids sports movie" formula, and desperately hope that Martin Lawrence provides a flicker of spunk.

I can't give Rebound more than two stars, not because it was necessarily bad, but because it was painfully predictable. It dares not stray from the tired but true progression of, "a small team of misfits is matched up with a reluctant savior, who inevitably leads the team to victory only after learning a valuable lesson." In this case, the reluctant coach, Roy McCormick, is played by Martin Lawrence, who attempts to single-handedly provide some unique quality to this film in order to distinguish it from all other kid movies. He fails.

Roy McCormick is a hotshot college basketball coach with an outrageous temper and passion for endorsement deals. The audience is repeatedly shown how out of touch with basketball Coach Roy has become by showing many examples of his advertisements, his flashy car, his expensive suits, etc. We are even treated to the routine clips from "The Best Damn Sports Show," where Tom Arnold proclaims that Coach Roy is losing it. After we have firmly established that Roy is in fact out of touch already, we get the inevitable temper tantrum that results in his expulsion from the league. Coach Roy then reluctantly agrees to coach a struggling junior high basketball team. This brilliant plan will supposedly help him rebuild his reputation, thereby allowing him to gain readmittance to the league. Because apparently, the best way to gain credibility as a basketball coach is to instruct reject junior high kids, at which point one will just be rolling in offers from the NBA.

We watch as Coach Roy methodically teaches the kids how to play basketball, one skill at a time, through a series of over-dramatic techniques. He brings in a weird hoodlum preacher who is not funny at all and looks suspiciously like Martin Lawrence dressed up as a hoodlum preacher. He scours the student body for a very tall kid who is also clumsy in a humorous way. He also recruits a large girl to the team, as she is Susie-Likes-to-Fight, and Roy thinks that if things get rough, he can always channel his inner John Chaney and send her out to pummel someone. The audience laughs because she's a girl! Haha, get it—she's a girl! And all the while, goofy and upbeat music plays helpfully in the background, reminding us that this is a stupid kid's movie.

There's the romance factor of course, with Coach Roy trying to get a date with one kid's mom. There's also the slapstick assistant coach (played by SNL cast member Horatio Sanz), who bumbles around hoping to provide supplemental humor when basketballs slip out of his grasp and fly in all directions; there's the overzealous opposing coach who thinks junior high school basketball is as important as college or NBA--but then again, can you really blame the guy? After all, the film has already established that coaching junior high school basketball is a direct path to the big leagues.

Needless to say, this movie is tiresomely predictable, but not necessarily bad. I know that kids will like it, so I would recommend it as a very family-friendly movie. It definitely has the "cute factor," in that sense, but those of us who are not 13 may not see the same value in Rebound.

So bad it's scary flick that I suppose is pleasant enough for the youngest age groups, but the rest of us will suffer unspeakable pains sitting through this deflated dud. Martin Lawrence is a highly successful college basketball coach who has lost touch with the game and his players. A freak accident at one of his games is the last straw as he is banned from coaching the collegiate ranks and then decides to take a job at his old junior high school (being sent a fax by players without consent from administration, go figure!?). Soon the usual sports underdog story takes place with predictable and tiring results. Lawrence has been hit and miss (usually miss) in more adult-oriented flicks, but he looks like he is just trying to make a quick buck here. The kids are totally forgettable and the rest of the cast is unaccomplished and basically have no business in cinematic features. Plays like one of those Disney Network television movies. Hopelessly terrible air ball. 2 stars out of 5.

College basketball coach Roy McCormick is a great coach but also known for his fiery reputation. When one of his outbursts sees the very public death of another college's animal mascot, McCormick finds himself banned from the league but with one chance to redeem himself if he can work the remainder of the season without any trouble. Problem is, nobody will hire him to give him that chance to prove himself worthy of challenging the ban, which leads him to his old high school who haven't won a single game for decades.

I have checked so in 2005 I know we had the technology available to do this film a much easier way. What technology you ask? Well, to answer that you just need to look at the opening montages in the Oscars where Billy Crystal is inserted into the big films that year, or the adverts that feature dead stars in modern locations – essentially I guess it is a video version of Photoshop. For Rebound you see we could easily have accessed a handful of selected films, paid for the rights and left them alone with a team of digital editors for about two weeks and then there you have it. For the sports stuff we can go right to pretty much any family-friend basketball film that has comedy fat kids, cocky kids, a kid who "has talent but just needs the right leadership™" but who are a total bunch of losers but perhaps can pull it out for "the big game™". In regards of the rest of it, well, Lawrence certainly is not short of basic films where he plays the same character who learns lessons, makes smart remarks and, oh, hits it off with the sexy black single mom who originally disliked him for his arrogance but ultimately sees the good in him. If nothing else it would have been both an interesting technical project and a cutting commentary on modern family films if it had all been done by digital composite.

Sadly for us, it is instead a whole new film that does everything that other films have do and aspires to do nothing different and, certainly, nothing better. All the genre boxes are ticked, all the obvious pieces of humour are wheeled out and the narrative (for what it is) goes where you know it will from the very start. The "wacky" music lets us know when we are supposed to laugh and all the cast pull faces whenever they get the chance to do so. Lawrence screams laziness in every aspect – whether it be his body or his performance it is clear he cannot be bothered. I write that as someone willing to forgive him because he is pretty funny when he is "on" but in this family rubbish I think he took getting to the set as doing enough. Robinson has a great body and forces herself into affection with Lawrence in the same way everybody else does in these things, whether it be her, Nia Long or whoever. The kids are actually reasonably OK as they have a more straightforward job to deliver; Williams is cool enough to carry the "good kid" role, Martin is a bit irritating but mainly due to his character, McElroy, Hoffman and the others fill in with solid comedy turns. Shawkat is a weird find for Arrested Development fans, but at least she is amusing even if you cannot help feel it must have pained her to go from that to this. Correa-McMullen turns in a similarly solid "I'll do what is required" performance but is sadly more notable now for being killed in a gang-related shooting not long after this film came out.

Other than that tragic footnote though, there is nothing else of particular note about Rebound. It could easily have been other films run together because all it does is tick all the genre boxes without bringing anything new to the party. It is worse than that actually because, in accepting the basics as its all, it is not only mediocre but it mostly wallows in its mediocrity to the point where it offers nothing for adults and only very base entertainment for young children.

From the director of "Dr. Dolittle", and "Daddy Day Care", once again, true genius sparks from the filmaking of the genius of satire, parody, and downright outrageous comedy, as Steve Carr strikes again with "Rebound", the story about a crazed college coach, thrown of college basketball, gets the opportunity to go back to his roots and become the coach of the Smelters (A Middle School basketball team).

Martin Lawrence, the man who plays coach Roy McCormack, is again, the usual hysterical that he is. His witty humor and deadpan relationship with the kids are not even far between. The baskets are as funny as the game itself, as some yuppy comedy would put it, and is as good as it can get.

Tara Correa, this one's for you.