Juwanna avoid this one

Juwanna Mann (2002)

Rated: PG-13

Runtime: 91 minutes

Stars: Miguel A. Nunez Jr., Vivica A. Fox, Kevin Pollak

Director: Jesse Vaughan

Plot: Jamal (Miguel A. Nunez Jr.) is an on/off the court, pro basketball star/jerk, whose actions finally get him kicked out of the league. His life begins to fall apart, so with the help of his agent Lorne (Kevin Pollak), Jamal becomes Juwanna Mann, an out-of-the-blue women’s basketball sensation. Juwanna quickly turns her new team, the Charlotte Banshees, into a championship contender while falling in love with star teammate, Michelle (Vivica A. Fox).

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 0

Tournament seed: 16—movie makes the tournament only because it is an automatic qualifier. Has no chance of advancing. Avoid picking for any reason.

This movie was nothing but a collection of really bad jokes set up by putting “Juwanna” in situations where we are supposed to laugh. You know, because it’s funny when a man dressed as a women adjusts his crotch, gets dry humped by another man, has a fake breast fly across the room, checks out girls in the shower, gets a massage by a man, gets out of a ticket by lying about getting a sex-change operation to a male cop who is also going to get it done, showers with his uniform on, uses a urinal and gets checked out by other guys while burping and farting, and gets a physical. The basketball scenes were awful for the men, containing poor dribbling and slow motion shots. As for the women, I guess all they can do is make tricky passes and shoot uncontested layups. The music montages are equally not funny, just a lot of ass grabbing and female moustache shaving. The biggest shocker is how the Banshees were allowed to continue playing for a championship when they had a male in disguise for a major part of the season.

I thought I had suffered enough, but was treated to the “hilarious” outtakes during the credits. Of all the badly written dialogue, the best line was delivered by one of Juwanna’s teammates, European center Magda:

Magda: “In my country, penis ok. My mother have penis.”