Dawgs up

The 6^th Man (1997)

Rated: PG-13

Run Time: 108 minutes

Stars: Marlon Wayans, Kadeem Hardison, David Paymer, Michael Michelle

Director: Randall Miller

Plot: Antoine (Kadeem Hardison) and Kenny Tyler (Marlon Wayans) are brothers and basketball teammates from youngsters to college. Antoine is the older star and Kenny is the younger sidekick. Kenny and Antoine complete a sweet alley-oop during a game and Antoine dies of a heart attack. Kenny begins to struggle on/off the court, but he is helped in his time of need by Coach Pederson (David Paymer) who likes scotch and taking runs at the wife, and R.C. St. John (Michael Michele) a sideline reporter and part-time ghostbuster … wait … did I not mention that Antoine’s ghost hangs around the team to help them make it to the NCAA Tournament?

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.

Unfortunately, this movie tries to be funny when it should be serious and then tries to be serious when it should be funny. The scenes are drawn out waaaaay too looooong; it takes 25 minutes for Kadeem Hardison to have a heart attack … it’s no wonder this movie is almost 2 hours long; it should have been closer to an hour and a half. The movie contains 2 different versions of the song “Superstitious” which I found to be kind of weird. The basketball scenes are pretty good when they want to be, but that isn’t very often. Going into the movie I would have guessed that it would be pretty funny and that Marlon Wayans would be the ghost and Kadeem Hardison would be the living player. I was wrong on both. Of course only Kenny can see Antoine’s ghost and hear his voice (which is very creepy), which leads to this series of events: Kenny screaming like a girl and running around like a baby, Kenny acting strange and looking to others like he’s talking to himself, things happening on the court that are obviously not possible but nobody seems to care, and old white coaches dancing. Oh, and a scene where Kenny is talking to his ghost brother in the men’s room, which to everyone else looks like he is talking to his penis. Antoine has a hard time not being alive anymore when the team starts to win, so he starts to go all “scary ghost” to get the team to believe Kenny, and to win games over Fresno State, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Kentucky to make it to the Final 4. The team then realizes that they don’t really like winning with the help of a ghost, but Antoine throws a Georgetown player into a backboard before they make their feelings known to him. So they are set to face Massachusetts in the finals without their “6^th Man” (see what I did there?) and it results in a 20-point first half deficit. Cue the motivational speech by Kenny: “Take Antoine with us for the second half … right here” (pointing to his heart), which makes everyone cry, even Antoine. Kenny gets hot and the team trails by 2 points with 16 seconds left. Massachusetts steals the ball, which should have resulted in a foul by Kenny or his team, but they let Massachusetts run the clock down to 4 seconds when Kenny comes up with a steal and lets it fly from half-court. Antoine swoops in to guide it towards the hoop, Kenny screams “Let it go”, Antoine does, and the ball bounces around and in. Antoine tries to slip away during the celebration, but Kenny finds him before he heads into “the light”. They have their “I love you, brother” moment and then Kenny cuts down the net.

I can’t believe I just spent all this time writing about a bad movie. On to creative trash-talking:

Coach Pederson: “My wife has a plastic Jesus on her dashboard, moves better than you do.”