Rewind to Saturday night, when our DVR queue was blank, and there weren’t any college or pro basketball games on that were really worth watching. Krissy logged on to her older brother’s Netflix account (hooray, free movies!) and began searching for something (anything), but the cupboard seemed pretty bare there too. Finally, we found ourselves looking at a still-shot and description of something called “Freestyle.” I made the unfortunate mistake of noticing that in part of the description it said something like, “If you liked Step Up, then you will love Freestyle.” Krissy of course loved the original “Step Up,” so that was enough for her to at least check it out right there, but the movie cover also appeared to somehow incorporate basketball into the plot, which made us even more curious.
Looks suspiciously bad, but how can you turn down new music by Toddla T and Lethal Bizzle?
Before the movie even started, I figured we were in for a night of bad movie watching, but I noticed something about London in the opening screen where the production company is being shown, which made me wonder, “Wait…is this a British movie?” Sure enough, the opening scene shows a 3-on-3 streetball game, and the trash talking includes words like "rubbish" and "cheerio"...ok, I made the 2nd part up, but this definitely appeared to be a "hardcore" game of "streetball" on the mean streets of London. (I'm sure there actually are mean streets of London, but it still made for a funny scenario.)
Anyway, to say the whole movie was a farce would be putting it nicely, but I somehow found it weirdly fascinating. The acting and the plot were terrible and ludicrous, respectively, and there were plenty of those "Wait, what?" moments I was describing before. The movie is centered around a from-different-sides-of-the-tracks love story. The guy is the poor, thug streetballer. The girl is a gymnast who is going to Oxford. They made mention of her being a gymnast like twice the entire movie, and yet in the climactic freestyle tournament (more on that later), the guy uses some kind of like gymnastics handstand dismount move as like his show-stopper. It's supposed to be tribute to the girl and an infusion of one style into another and blah blah...except there were basically no gymnastics throughout the whole movie, so why do I care? There was also the prototypical rape scene where one of the male lead's boys tries to have his way with the girl lead after she gets over-served at a house party. She eventually got away in time thanks to a stiff kick to the groin, but then her love interest (who had been looking for her all over town) finds her as she walks outside. When the attempted date-rapist walks outside moments later, our hero slugs the guy in the face...sounds great, except he had no idea about any sexual assault or anything, so he basically punched his boy in the face for no reason whatsoever...nice job, "Freestyle."
Aside from the typical plot holes in a bad movie, most of "Freestyle's" entertainment stemmed from the "freestyling" that the movie was based around. There were at least a dozen aspects that made me say to myself at one point or another, "Is this what British people think of when they think of basketball?" The freestyle competition is nothing more than a glorified dance contest. There is some random dribbling or spinning the ball on your fingers, but it was mostly like watching some type of combination of dance and rhythmic gymnastics, where the participant uses a ball or a ribbon or whatever as a prop. Heck, in the female lead's freestyle routine, she laid the ball on the ground the majority of the time while she just writhed her body around it. It was all very strange to watch, as even the wildest And 1 Mixtape players would agree that saying this had anything to do with basketball would be a stretch. (The dancing itself was weak at best as well.)
There were also a bunch of other elements that you couldn't help laughing at and saying, "Oh Britain, you slay me." For example, Luol Deng is the idol to these guys. Ok, fringe All-Star who I believe has some UK ties...I get that, but I don't think Deng gets much recognition as a streetball legend or anything. I might have missed that part of the Luol Deng story...but really, of all people, Luol Deng? Another thing was that the ballers' dresscode on the court was comical. They looked like they were more likely to be in a Paul Wall music video than do anything basketball-related. Also, our rapist-to-be wears nothing but brightly colored matching jumpsuits (not to mention a gold pinky ring), and I assure you that his wardrobe choice is not intended to be ironic. Best of all though, in the final scene referenced above, our male lead dons an away-blue Gilbert Arenas Wizards jersey...classic, just classic. Unbelievably, "Freestyle" was rated with 3/5 stars on Netflix (1.9 out of 10 on IMDB though). In terms of watchability, it's pretty cringe-worthy overall. The acting, the "basketball," the plot...I'm not going to lie, it's all pretty horrendous, but that's also why I think it deserves someone trying to start an underground cult-following for it. If not me, then who? So, if you ever have an hour and a half to kill and want to see some truly awful movie-making and butchering of basketball culture, "Freestyle" is your go-to. Let's get this thing going, everybody. See the trailer below...
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