Uncle Drew Review

Uncle Drew started as a YouTube sensation, and it’s cool to see it make the jump to the big screen, though I think it could have stayed online. The best thing about it is how much heart it has. That’s the one thing you can’t take away from it.

Adding actors like Lil Rel Howery, Tiffany Haddish and Nick Kroll was smart. If it had been only NBA stars, it would have been hard to watch, since most of them don’t have much movie experience. Nate Robinson was a surprise; with the makeup, you really have to look to tell it’s him. Kyrie Irving clearly got the bigger makeup budget, and his voice work is okay. The tournament scenes feel like an AND1 commercial: buckets, buckets, buckets.

The bad: it feels like a cash grab, a commercial inside a commercial inside a commercial. There’s product placement for just about anything they could promote. I like my movies to have more than heart. It also spends way too much time on Dax, Lil Rel’s character, and not enough on Uncle Drew. The movie is named after him, but you barely get his backstory, and Dax has no real connection to him. It’s also very cliché. You can tell from the start how Dax’s storyline is going to turn out, because it telegraphs it so hard.

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Uncle Drew (2018) Cast and Details

Uncle Drew (2018) is directed by Charles Stone III and stars Kyrie Irving, Lil Rel Howery, Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber and Reggie Miller. It runs 103 minutes and is rated PG-13. You can look up the full cast and crew on IMDb. You might also like my The First Purge review.