WESLEY SNIPES — WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP

A term reserved for those with no set position on a basketball team is “tweener.” Sometimes it can speak to versatility — someone who can move about the entirety of the court and not be out of place. However, in a more negative connotation, it can be a description of someone who doesn’t really fit anywhere. The latter scenario is common whenever an individual has athletic gifts but no real aptitude for the game. Enter Wesley Snipes.

Snipes has a knack for inhabiting physical roles and pulling off stunts. See Blade, for example. He has trained in martial arts and shown a physicality that proves he possesses agility and grace. However, when attempting to translate those talents to a team sport, it’s awkward.

Snipes’ most egregious attempt was as the braggadocious Sidney Deane in White Men Can’t Jump, a man who would make you believe he was God’s gift to basketball. Deane certainly wins a bunch of games and pairs well with Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) throughout, but if you focus on Snipes’ actual playmaking ability, it is clear he hadn’t really picked up a basketball much. The director, Ron Shelton, tried to prepare him, but with Snipes’ abnormally high dribbling, unconventional jump shot, and movement with and without the ball, there is a discrepancy between how Deane is presented and how Snipes looks. This is especially noticeable anytime he’s shown playing next to Harrelson, a silky-smooth operator on the court, which speaks to his familiarity with the game off screen. 

Obviously, you can trust Snipes to mow down vampires and fight Sylvester Stallone hand-to-hand, but you cannot trust him to realistically drive the lane and stick the ball in the basket.

FREDDIE PRINZE, JR. — SUMMER CATCH

Baseball is a sport defined by minimal success, where most outcomes are failures. The margins are razor-thin between positive and negative results, with the most minute adjustments leading to major shifts one way or the other. For a pitcher, the difference can be made with slight height or rotational changes in delivery, or even tiny injuries on a throwing hand, to go from unhittable to mediocre. As such, if you are experienced, you might be able to notice when something is off for whomever is on the mound.

This leads me to Freddie Prinze, Jr., who takes the mound in Summer Catch to mixed results. Despite his stature and build, Prinze, Jr. has never been the most convincing athlete on screen (as also seen in She’s All That), but in a sport where timing and physics are requirements, it was even more apparent he was miscast. 

Prinze, Jr. claimed he worked with a pitching coach and could throw in the 80-mph range for the film, a la Charlie Sheen in Major League. Whether you buy that or not, the difference between the actors is that Sheen and his motion looked believable. Prinze, Jr., on the other hand, makes you wonder if he could even throw it 30 feet, much less 60. The real giveaway is how the camera catches Prinze, Jr. in close-ups before he throws, then transitioning to a wide shot or over-the-shoulder view once he enters his windup. This is clearly to hide his mechanics, suggesting director Michael Tollin wasn’t confident he could edit around the lack of throwing skill.

Granted, Ryan Dunne (Prinze, Jr.) is playing at the minor league level, but that would still mean he was in the top five percent of baseball players on the planet. Near the end, Dunne throws a no-hitter before running off to chase Tenley Parrish (Jessica Biel). Unfortunately, only if the game stats show him walking every batter would it be viable that Dunne didn’t allow a hit. Otherwise, it is the most fictional concept in a fictional film.

KIRSTEN DUNST — WIMBLEDON

When it comes to individual sports, with so much attention focused on the participants, it makes actual talent much easier to scrutinize. There simply is nowhere to hide and no other person to draw eyes like they would when part of a team. 

In movies, tennis has been challenging to illustrate without camera manipulation and quick cuts since real tennis professionals train for years from an early age to improve their speed and range of motion. Thus, there is somewhat of an unwritten acceptance to look past the inconsistencies and just enjoy the tension of the moments. However, when one of the conceits of the film is that a player is a rising prodigy set to take the tennis world by storm, leading her to avoid a distracting relationship, there is a level of criticism to consider. 

After looking back at on-the-court scenes in Wimbledon, I could not stand idly by and leave Kirsten Dunst off this list. I don’t believe she could serve in a restaurant, much less with a tennis racket. In the scene where Lizzie Bradbury (Dunst) and Peter Colt (Paul Bettany) are trying to hit canisters with serves, her getting a ball within ten feet of the target seems like movie magic. There is a lack of hand-eye coordination and striking ability that would see her more likely whiff than ever manage to hit a ball in a forward direction. Interestingly, the focus of the film is mostly on Colt’s comeback after a period of ineffective play, but if it was staged that Bradbury was the one trying to play her way back to prominence after a slump, that would make sense too.

ROBBIE AMELL — THE DUFF

As football players are preparing to be drafted, they endure rigorous testing and practice sessions for scouts so that teams know what they are investing in. Such tests are designed to review the physical, mental, and emotional capacities of the players in question. From a physical standpoint, they look at measurables and how those will translate to a standard of success based on league precedents.For quarterbacks, much like with pitchers, throwing motions are nitpicked, especially the timing of a player’s release. If someone has wonky mechanics, it slows everything down, making it seem unlikely they would be able to get the ball out in time.

For Robbie Amell, who portrayed the captain of the high school football team and future Ohio State Buckeye in The Duff, there would be an inclination to have him look competent while tossing the pigskin. It didn’t end up that way, though. He short-arms the few attempts captured on screen, as if the person he is throwing to is three feet in front of him. Amell received such backlash about it that he made efforts to show that he knows what it takes to throw a football off-camera — that’s how bad it looked.

Either way, despite the plot consideration in the movie that he needs academic help to get into college, his brain would be the only way he’s getting into Ohio State because it certainly wouldn’t be his arm.

RUSSELL CROWE — MYSTERY, ALASKA

Hockey is as graceful as any other sport, and perhaps even more so given that people glide on 1/8-inch blades. Much like with tennis, the grooming starts at an early age to gain and hone the necessary skills. 

In most hockey movies, the team will have a few piss-poor skaters to play up the comedy or to highlight that skating isn’t their contributable skill, like fighting is for Doug “the Thug” Glatt (Seann William Scott) in Goon. 

When you are propped up as the captain, albeit an aging one that the town wants to bench, you would think the ice would be like a second home. Unfortunately, for Russell Crowe in Mystery, Alaska, he skates like he is mired in cement, clearly demonstrating he grew up in Australia and not on frozen ponds. Sure, John Biebe (Crowe) leads and hits with ferocity, but to be the anchor of an amateur team trying to go toe-to-toe with the New York Rangers, it seems odd the actor portraying him clearly cannot keep up, especially when a key point of the story is that the local hockey team can compete with the NHL pros based mostly on their ability to skate. Perhaps if the water thawed, Crowe could show them how to ride the waves with conviction. Otherwise, in real life, he’d leave his team out in the cold.