Time to get live, time to represent

Sunset Park (1996)

Rated: R

Runtime: 99 minutes

Stars: Rhea Perlman, Fredro Starr, Terrence Howard

Director: Steve Gomer

Plot: Phyllis Saroka (Rhea Perlman) is a teacher at Sunset Park High School. She wants to get into the restaurant business, but meanwhile takes the vacant head coach position of the school’s basketball team. Her on-the-court antics include drinking Slushies and eating Twizzlers, while her off-the-court time is spent not getting a man and watching “karate” movies. The team she inherits is talented, but full of guys with on/off the court issues.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 3 basketballs. 1 for my recommendation, 1 for the sweet rapping from coach and the team, and 1 for Brent Rich telling me that this movie was going to be good (and it actually being good).

Tournament seed: 5–9—movie is favored to win its first game in the tournament and has a good chance to win a second game. But depending on the team it is matched up against, could be an early upset. Be sure to do your research before choosing.

This was actually a surprisingly good movie. The team of Andre, Busy-Bee, Butter, Drano, Kurt, Shorty, and Spaceman gave a lot of reasons to like and root for them. The basketball scenes from the practices/games were the best I have seen in any movie I have reviewed in my blog to date. The movie does a great job of tackling issues such as drugs, race, sex, school, and violence, without overdoing it and boring the viewer. The soundtrack is great, using many songs from popular artists such as 2Pac, 69 Boyz featuring Quad City DJ’s, Ghostface Killah featuring Raekwon, Junior M.A.F.I.A., Mobb Deep, Queen Latifah, Tha Dogg Pound, and Onyx (which co-star Fredro Starr used to be a member of). The movie has a nice flow of humor with many uses of the word punanai, a touch of edginess by dropping the n-bomb a lot, and some drama with the team coming together in a “help me help you” kind of way; all culminating in a trip to Madison Square Garden for the city championship. I won’t reveal whether Drano’s 3 at the buzzer goes in or not, but coach and the team are coming back next year on a mission!

There was a funny scene which made me say: “Holy shit, it’s Warrick from CSI!” and I learned that Bruce Lee is half black, half Chinese.* And Rhea Perlman came through with a comeback for the ages:

Coach: “Sit on a Twizzler, asshole!”

* He’s not really.