Like Mike (2002)

2 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

I liked 'Mike'

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

If you've seen the posters for Juwanna Mann and Like Mike side-by-side on boarded-up buildings or subway walls and have lumped them together as two of the same fish-out-of-water-plays-basketball stories, let me correct you by saying that Juwanna Mann isn't fit to look at Like Mike's outtakes.

In the deplorable Juwanna Mann, a male basketball player dresses up as a woman to play for the WBA. In Like Mike, a young boy finds a pair of magic shoes and plays for the NBA. You might expect Like Mike to be one of those, "it wasn't the shoes, it was really you all along"-type stories. But instead it's a warm, bright "jerk-redeemed-by-the-love-of-a-child" movie -- similar in many ways to About a Boy.

Fourteen year-old rapper Lil' Bow Wow (as of today, he's known as just plain "Bow Wow") stars as Calvin, a basketball-loving orphan whose best friends are a white boy and an Asian girl, giving the movie a cuddly, everyone-is-invited feel. Crispin Glover plays the self-obsessed weirdo in charge of the orphanage.

When a box of used clothes arrives, a pair of basketball shoes falls out. Calvin discovers that, not only are they a perfect fit, but they have the initials "M.J." printed on the tongue. A bully tosses them up on a telephone wire and they're struck by lightning, leaving Calvin with nothing to do but try them on and utter the magic words, "make me like Mike."

At a Los Angeles Knights game, Calvin impresses everyone by beating the Knights' star player Tracey Reynolds (Morris Chestnut) in a halftime one-on-one match, climaxing in a huge slam-dunk that leaves him hanging by the rim -- while every soul in the stadium gapes at him in stunned silence.

Knights coach Wagner (Robert Forester) gives Calvin a shot in a game and finds that, combined with Tracey's might on the court, he's just what the Knights need to give the team a shot at the playoffs.

The rest of the plot concerns Calvin trying to get the conceited Tracey to like him, while keeping everyone from discovering the secret of the shoes.

Most of the movie's energy comes from Lil' Bow Wow himself; he's a screen natural. The movie opens on a close shot of his face, and from that moment on, he has us in his pocket. Even when uttering groan-worthy lines like, "I'm an orphan" and "all I really want is a family" that Shirley Temple might have said 70 years ago, he comes across as perfectly sincere.

And yet, he knows when to mug and when to pull back. During one of those "series of bad dates" montages in which he interviews prospective parents, he gives us a bug-eyed, slack-jaw look that perfectly compliments the ridiculousness of the situation -- as if he knows this scene has been done before, but he's enjoying himself anyway.

Lil' Bow Wow perfectly compliments Chestnut, who has his best role since perhaps Boyz N the Hood, finally avoiding the shy, earnest, thoughtful character he's been stuck with lately in films like The Best Man and The Brothers. The two characters treat each other as equals, without talking down to each other or to us.

One of my favorite moments has Chestnut and Bow Wow rushing out to the drug store for Chestnut's allergy medication just moments before their curfew. Chestnut takes sleeping medication by mistake, forcing the too-young-to-drive Bow Wow to drive back to the hotel. Predictably, he squeals off in reverse. The car goes off camera and we hear a series of crashing noises, followed by a canned "screeching cat" noise that must be 30 years old if it's a day. The cat noise caught me off guard and I found myself stupidly grinning at the cheerfulness of the whole thing.

Though the plot is far too contrived to make it worth a second viewing and it has no directorial presence to speak of, Like Mike is a kind of The Princess Diaries for boys; it offers a gentle summer fantasy for both grown-ups and little ones.

Basketball fans in particular will enjoy cameos by such NBA stars as Jason Richardson (from the Warriors), David Robinson, Allen Iverson, Chris Webber and Alonzo Mourning.