Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

I understand that Like Mike wasn't actually a movie made for *me*. And therefore, I can be totally tolerant of the fact that it wasn't marketed towards me as its ideal viewing audience. But they could have gotten me to see this one in the theatres with just a bit more marketing savvy. You see, a basketball movie starring Lil' Bow Wow and Jonathan Lipnicki is easily dismissed by this particular discerning viewer. Even with advertised cameos by Allen Iverson, Dirk Nowitzki, and Jason Kidd, I didn't need to see Like Mike. But had somebody told me that Like Mike also featured Crispin Glover as a creepy orphanage owner and Robert Forster as a basketball coach and Anne Meara as a nun? Well, then we're talking. It's those off-beat casting choices, and the film's moderately intelligent script that helped make Like Mike into a family film that caused me no pain and that I even enjoyed in places.

Mr. Bow Wow plays Calvin Cambridge, a young orphan at a diverse LA orphanage. He's best friends with Murph (Jerry Maguire moppet Lipnicki) and Reg (Brenda Song). Calvin wants to play ball, but he's little and gets taken to school regularly by the big bully Ox (Jesse Plemons). The orphans are also forced by their evil headmaster, Stan Bittleman (Glover), to see chocolate bars outside of the Staples Center before Los Angeles Knights games. One night Calvin gets the chance to sell chocolate to the Knights's head coach, played by Robert Forster. Calvin makes a good sell, but won't take the coach's money, admitting that he isn't sure that the money is really going to orphans. The coach rewards his honestly for tickets to the game the next day.

Meanwhile, at the orphanage, the nuns are passing out donated clothing, when Calvin finds a pair of Nikes with "MJ" written on the tongue. The nun only knows that the shoes came from that tall bald basketball player. Calvin immediate assumes that they belonged to Michael Jordan. They fit Calvin perfectly, but Ox takes them and throws them onto a powerline. That night, Calvin, Murph, and Reg go out to get them off the powerline, but lightening strikes, electrocuting the shoes and, by extension, Calvin. But he's OK. But don't try this at home. At the game next night, Calvin wins a promotion to go one on one with the Knights's enigmatic star Tracey Reynolds (Morris Chestnut). When he ties his shoes, he wishes he could "Be like Mike" and, wouldn't you know it? He is. Calvin gets signed to a contract, becomes a star, and begins a bonding experience with Tracey.

Now, Roger Ebert wonders in his review of Like Mike whether Michael Jordan would actually write MJ inside his shoes and jokingly suggests that he has assistants to do it for him. That's not the right question, since clearly the shoes would have been owned by a young Michael Jordan, who very likely would have identified his sneakers. The bigger questions include: Mr. Bow Wow is a tiny young man, and at what age would Jordan have been his size? 8? Did Nike make a basketball shoe in 1970 that Michael Jordan would have worn? And why wouldn't he have thrown out (or donated) those shoes years earlier? And why would he have donated the shoes to an orphanage in Los Angeles thirty years later? Yes. I understand. Those are stupid questions, but they make more sense than the ones Ebert raised.

Also, what exactly is operating in those magic sneakers? Did the power come from the lightening? Or from the wishing? Or from the presence of aged Jordan-related sweat? And why can only Bow Wow wear those magical shoes? Is it because he was zapped with them? Or because he truly believed? And what exactly do the shoes allow him to do? Mr. Bow Wow is dunking all over the place and he never appears to miss a shot. Well, Jordan, of course, misses frequently, and he doesn't have the five foot vertical that these shoes give Mr. Bow Wow. In reality, the additional skills provided by the shoes far outweigh any skills possessed by Jordan, since Jordan's 6'6" and has muscles and stuff. Bow Wow's a scrawny midget and suddenly he's a superstar.

Anyway, as I've said, these are questions that don't really need to be asked. In fact, I suspect that the more you question the premise and details of Like Mike, the more frustrated you'll get.

Like Mike joins the ranks of decent "little kids in the big-time" sports movies. It's still inferior to Daniel Stern's Rookie of the Year, in which Thomas Ian Nicholas becomes a star Cubs pitcher after breaking his arm. That film also featured daffy supporting actors including Gary Busey and Dan Hedaya. And both films have similar conclusions in which the young stars must find a way to be heroes at the last second even as their superpowers have gone. Like Mike is, however, superior to Andrew Scheinman's Little Big League, which starred Luke Edwards as the young manager of the Minnesota Twins.

It's a venerable genre made appealing by the eternal aspect of wish fulfillment that it causes. Professional athletes live out the dreams of every little kid. They may be grown-ups, but they play games for huge amounts of money and every aspect of their life seems geared towards the fantasies of an adolescent male. They get room service, babes, posh hotel suites, and, did I mention, they play games for huge amounts of money. Invariably, though, the kids still possess a youthful idealism towards sport that the grown-ups have forgotten. They know baseball or basketball as a playground game that you play with friends for hours and hours, while the professionals only know the large contracts and perks and exhaustion, so the injection of a kid into the mix is like fresh blood. How can a struggling franchise not be revitalized by this young blood?

The film's basketball scenes are pretty much by the numbers. You know that Young Bow Wow is attached to wires at all times, but it rarely looks too too bad. While the Los Angeles Knights may be a fake team (with their history of struggle and losing seasons, they're more Clippers than Lakers), they play against real opponents, which may distract some NBA fans. The arenas are real and some of the opposing players are real. Kidd, Iverson, Nowitzki, Steve Francis, Gary Payton, David Robinson, and Chris Webber (among others) play themselves and they're all fine. Some of the more "skilled" actors among NBA players — Rick Fox, Shaq, and Ray Allen — chose to sit this one out, which is too bad. It's also a minor disappointment that Michael Jordan doesn't make an appearance. Still, they have real ESPN SportsCenter anchors appearing as themselves as well as former player/ announce Reggie Theus and former 76ers president Pat Croce working the sidelines. Everything has the proper gloss of a product endorsed by the NBA.

And, of course, Calvin is like a kid in a candy store. He gorges on room service, loves the team's chartered planes, and asks other NBA players for autographs during games. It's a dream any kid would love to live out.

The basketball plot aside, Like Mike is given emotional depth by its orphanage setting and backstory. It's one thing for a little kid to become an NBA star, but it's another for that to only be a secondary dream. Sure, Calvin is happy as an NBA player, but the film leaves little doubt that he'd happily give it up to be adopted by a loving family and that while his friends at the orphanage aren't jealous of his being a star, they are disappointed that he now has a better chance of finding a home because of his new popularity. Jonathan Lipnicki isn't much of an actor, but his character is interesting in how he works through his jealousy. These kids watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the chance to find a home with a rich Buppie family is far more appealing than living the NBA life. Having the predictably odd Glover running the orphanage is just a touch of brilliance. Sure, you can tell that he's doing this for the pay check and he certainly could have been much weirder, but his very presence is enough to improve the movie.

The same is true of Robert Forster and Eugene Levy as Calvin's coach and an important Knights's employee. Forster brings surprising warmth to his character as well as the sense of resigned bemusement that would be the actor's trademark if you could say he had one. And Levy, as he always does, contributes mightily to the film's humor.

Lil' Bow Wow does what needs to be done. I'm not prepared to call his collection of mugging and double takes "acting," but I'm certainly prepared to say that his performance caused me no pain and was sometimes even funny. He also works well with the various NBA stars and with Morris Chestnut. Chestnut has a tough part because the script never lets him be the bad-boy that part requires. It's never made entirely clear just how much Calvin improves Tracey as a person and as a player.

******MAJOR SPOILER******
The film's ending is seriously problematic. Chestnut's character ends up adopting both Calvin and Murph and it appears that life from now on will just be a big slumber party. But is this man really prepared to be the father of not one but two children? Hardly. What kind of adoption agency would allow a single father, on the road most of the year, to adopt two young boys? How will they be raised? How will they be schooled? Etc? Both Calvin and Murph have a variety of psychological problems from their orphanage years. How are those going to be taken care of? And their Asian friend Reg? It appears that she was adopted, but the film doesn't really care about how that came to pass. I'm just not convinced that this is a proper ending, even if it's happy.
*******SPOILERS OVER

Like Mike was directed with a soft touch by John Schultz and shot (with the same candy-coating that he brought to Bring It On) by Shawn Maurer. The soundtrack is, predictably, full of light hip-hop including songs by Mr. Wow himself. There's also a cute sequence in which Wow and Chestnut sing along to a DMX track and make fun of each other's abilities. Like Mike is rated PG and will probably be appropriate for nearly all children.

Would I recommend Like Mike to all of my friends? Nah. But would I recommend it to parents who want a movie that they might kinda enjoy and that their kids will like? Yes. So that's the reasoning behind my recommendation here.

[And in case anybody is curious, I saw Like Mike on my plane trip to Cleveland last week. I feel OK about reviewing it, since I doubt it was edited much.]


Recommended: Yes