Billy Hoyle is a white basketball hustler who banks on black players underestimating his skills on the court. When he pulls one over on Sidney Deane, his victim sees a lucrative opportunity, and they become partners in the con game, plying their trade across the courts of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Billy has to keep one step ahead of mobsters, to whom he owes money.
They're black and white instead of fat and thin, but Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson have the makings of a classic comedy team, the Laurel and Hardy of the half-court game.
[White Men Can't Jump is] like a game of pick-up basketball: it's intense, raggedy and explosive, now and then yielding moments of sheer gravity-defying grace, yet just as capable of producing air balls and pratfalls.
It's a funny, frequently rousing film, with a warmly appealing acting partnership at its center-between basketball hustlers Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.
White Man Can't Jump is most effective at the beginning -- when it's bouncing along with the exuberance that Shelton brought to such other sports-minded movies as Bull Durham and The Best of Times.
Despite charismatic performances by Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes as nothing-but- net shooters who might be called the Schmo and the Bro, White Men Can't Jump throws up mostly bricks.
Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson give lively performances as the heroes, who relate better to basketballs than to women or the business world. The movie doesn't add up to very much, though.
