InsidePulse Review – Crossover

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Image courtesy of www.impawards.com

Director :

Preston A Whitmore II

Cast :

Wesley Jonathan……….Noah Cruise
Anthony Mackie……….Tech
Wayne Brady……….Vaughn
Philip Champion……….Jewelz

When it comes to making urban-oriented films, one of the chief detractions of the genre has been its glorification of the “gangster” culture and the lack of a film that has a positive upbeat message. While Tyler Perry has had limited success with his series of movies adapted from the stage, plenty of attempts have been made at making a “positive message” movie involving urban culture that can resonate with the youth of America. Almost all have failed, and one can add Crossover to that list as well.

Crossover is a tale of two friends. Tech (Anthony Mackie) is a high school dropout studying for his GED and dreams of playing basketball for a living. Cruise (Wesley Jonathan) is headed off to UCLA to play basketball, using the sport to fuel his dreams of medical school. After Cruise does Tech a favor by playing on his underground basketball team against his rival Jewelz (Philip Champion), he draws the notice of former NBA Agent Vaughn (Wayne Brady) who just happens to own the league and the club in which they party in. As Cruise prepares for the rigors of the NCAA and college life, and the resulting attention he gets to turn pro and make it a living, Crossover is a spectacular failure because it tries to do way much more than it can possibly handle.

To start with, the characters themselves are hard to believe as realistic in any way. The three main characters of the film (Cruise, Vaughn and Tech) are developed so completely off the gritty path the film tries to pave that the sort of fantasy land Writer/Director Preston Whitmore wants to create is completely laughable. It’s hard to swallow that an NBA agent like Vaughn would give up a high profile career to run an underground basketball league with minimal fouls, et al; it would be comparable to Peyton Manning giving up his career in the NFL to become a “fitness celebrity” like John Basedow. Equally laughable is Cruise shunning pro basketball to become a physician; one doesn’t get to the highest levels of basketball without wanting to play at them and his adamant refusal to make money at the thing he does best is laughable at best. While it is admirable that he would want to go to medical school, it’s also a bit unrealistic that the millions of dollars that potentially could be there for him wouldn’t be tempting in any way. It would be easier to buy anything about the story if the dialogue wasn’t so laughably bad.

Whitmore wants to give the film an urban flavor with real street slang, et al, but the film’s choice of language is a poor one considering the cast it has on hand. Jonathan and Mackie have shown in other, better films that they are quite articulate and don’t need the heavy-handed language and dialogue that would ordinarily be required. They don’t need it to have the sort of credibility in the roles, as their presence is enough to convey it, but being saddled with dialogue straight out of an opening act for a Coolio imitator takes away from everything they bring to the table.

The dialogue wouldn’t make the characters so laughable if it wasn’t for Brady’s professional performance as Vaughn. A laughable part, Brady is so much better than the cast that they look like amateurs next to him. While he does have his share of bad dialogue, Brady’s presence makes up for it in a way that helps at least keep his credibility as a dramatic actor intact.

InsidePulse’s Ratings for Crossover
CATEGORY
RATING
(OUT OF 10)
STORY

3.5
ACTING

1
ORIGINALITY

1
LOOK/FEEL

0
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE

0
OVERALL
1.0