CINEMA VIEWS by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

She Got Game in ‘Love & Basketball’

"Girl you look good! I didn’t know Nike made dresses!" --Smart aleck schoolmate to the athletic Monica at the h.s. dance

Although the film "Love & Basketball" purports to be about the pro sports aspirations of two lifelong friends who become lovers the ball playing takes place in the back court. The movie is a love story about the choices we make and the strange twists and turns it will take us, with the sports as the vehicle and hook. And when basketball is shown there are many more scenes of women playing basketball than men, and no male locker room scenes that I remember.

"Love & Basketball" was released at the same time as the Women’s National Basketball association championship games were being readied in Los Angeles. Quincy McCall and his next door neighbor is the baseball loving Monica Wright. "Love & Basketball" is arranged in quarters that show the different phases of their life from the 1980s to the present day, from the 11 year old’s first meetings and beyond their college years with music of the time. The movie is edited by local girl Terelyn Shropshire of Milwaukee, Wisconsin who did the excellent period film "Eve’s Bayou."

Sonaa Lathan from "The Best Man" and Omar Epps from "In Too Deep", "The Mod Squad" and "The Wood" star as the court-crossed lovers who try and balance their love for the sport for their chance at a life full of happiness with each other. Debbi Morgan, Dennis Haysbert, Alfre Woodard, and Erika Ringor co-star.

I listened in as the woman around me spoke about the film. JJ and our daughter Jamie were my guests. "She’s gonna need some scissors to cut that dress off her!" someone in the row behind us opined when Lana, Monica’s helpful older college sister tries to make her look feminine for the high school dance by providing a sexy white dress, a makeover, and a handsome sophomore she knows. This doesn’t stop the catty remarks by the more feminine acting girls at the school.

"Damn, girl you look good! I didn’t know Nike made dresses!" the smart aleck schoolmate Shawnee says to the athletic Monica at the dance. We saw this next scene in films as disparate as "The Wood" and "Mississippi Masala" where during the slow-dance the two couples who are dancing with others use body language across the floor to try and make the other jealous by hands-near-rear placement; arms around the neck and heads on shoulders.

"Love & Basketball" is rated PG and is appropriate for children, and the parents have sure been taking them. Unlike "The Wood" and "Soul Food" the love scenes don’t show anything, there is no bodaceous nudity, and the language isn’t overly harsh. Some filmmakers have found out how to make a film that doesn’t expose too much of the "butte nekkid truth" and still be entertaining with good quality.

I see that many mothers are taking their little girls to "Love & Basketball" as well. The message contained about following your dreams and seeking a balance is a positive one. For the fellas, the idea that lightening up and letting your woman exist in her own limelight instead of just in yours reflected or in your shadow is a good one for us to take to heart as well.

"You’ll get more notice from being known as ‘Q’s Girl’ than you will as a basketball player" the insensitive (and insecure) Quincy tells Monica as they play for their college teams and Monica fails to make the first string.

The women’s basketball team has few viewers while the men’s is packed. The media and scouts populate the stands of their game while the women hope for a WBMA or a foreign league opportunity overseas where female athletes are "treated like we’re Hollywood stars" when they got game.

"Those Italian men love them some Black women" says the competitive Sidra, played by Erika Ringor. "They can’t get enough of me!" she tells Monica as they dine in a swank Barcelona restaurant.

"Go back to America for what?" Sidra asks after their European championship game in Spain.

Little girls need to see that having smarts and skills and not babies can take them around the world, and it is good that "Love & Basketball" shows this. Getting pregnant and missing out on life is included several times in the movie, which male athletes don’t have to worry about as much.

But the Tender Trap is also discussed as when Zeke tells his son of his years as a pro player.

Dennis Haysbert from the president of TVs "24", the al PAcino film "HEAT" and "Random Hearts" plays his father Zeke.

"When the NBA rolls into a city there are 100 girls in the hotel lobby and the 20 most determined make it onto the floor" he tells his son.

There are some girls, Zeke says, who try and get a baby by a player so they can catch him in the trap and cut themselves a phat lifetime paycheck. Zeke lets it hang in the air whether Quincy’s still young, stylish and foxy mother was herself one of those predatory women. Zeke neither confirms nor denies it.

Lathan is building up a fan base for herself after the a Smart Cookie roles she’s played in two back-to-back films. She has the same qualities that made stars out of "X-Men" star Halle Berry, "28 Days" and "A Time To Kill’s" Sandra Bullock, and Renee Zelweger of "Jerry Maguire" and the Jim Carrey and Farelly Brother’s farce flick "Me, Myself, and Irene."

Like them, Lathan radiates warmth, shyness, strength, sexiness and intelligence, sometimes all at once. People just like her on sight. She doesn’t look, sound or act like a Video Hoe, or a woman with a crust around her heart that you’d have to scrape away to find out if there was a real person beneath who’s worth it.

Epps, for his part, has played so many high school and college kids that he’s built a career out it. He played an adult role in the post-school film "The Wood" but he’d largely been relegated to youth roles, although he has skills far beyond that as we saw in the cop drama "In Too Deep" opposite Nia Long and LL Cool J. We can excuse the wretched "The Mod Squad" fiasco Epps was in with Claire Danes and "Boiler Room’s" Giovanni Ribisi where they played twentysomething police undercover agents.

Epps’ small stature and boyish looks, like Mehki Phifer is used extensively in youthful roles such as his breakthrough film "Juice" with Tupac Shakur, and "The Program," the college football movie with James Caan where Epps’ athleticism was used as it was in John Singleton’s college based "Higher Learning" with Victoria’s Secret supermodel Tyra Banks, who is reteamed with him here.

"Love & Basketball" in fact is a reunion ground for several stars such as Monica Calhoun from "The Best Man" and Haysbert who played one of Whitney Houston’s love interests in "Waiting To Exhale."

"Down In The Delta" star and Tulsa Oklahoma native Alfre Woodard joins "Eve’s Bayou" star Debbi Morgan as the mothers of the two athletes. The scenes with the parents are some of the most poignant of "Love & Basketball" as the kids have to justify their life choices and the wants of their parents.

"Isn’t that what you think of me, that I’m a Lesbian because I’d rather wear a jersey than an apron?!" says Monica to Woodard, who as Mona is a happy homebody. But she had dreams once too, her mother tells her. "And I feel you look down on me just because I’d rather bake a pie than make a stupid jump shot."

The two kids grow up they grow together as friends. "Get off your knees, Monie, you’ll turn them black. And I found that box with your dresses in it underneath some pile in the garage..." her perplexed mother tells the 11 year old Monica, who doesn’t much care for such girly things. But she sure likes the boy next door well enough!

One of the tenderest moments is when the noise of Quincy’s quarreling parents has him enact a ritual he and Monica evolved: He grabs up a blanket and heads across the yard to her first floor bedroom. She opens up the window, he climbs in and lays down on the floor as she climbs back in her own bed and drops off. Quincy treats her just like one of the fellas. --KJW

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Have an opinion on the movies? Contact Kevin J. Walker at

thewordnetpaper@excite.com

P.O. box 1324-53201

Milwaukee, Wis. 53201

-KJW