| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Here's a truly novel sports film: It actually has a script, decent acting, sympathetic characters. And it's fun.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
But even though, most of the time, you know exactly what will happen next -- you don't much mind. Nor do the many plot holes and improbabilities -- undermine its silly, raucous spirit.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Predictable to its very core, and in a funny way the predictability is part of the fun. The movie is in on the joke of its own recycling.
|
| 50 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Director Jesse Vaughan keeps the ball in play through the aw-shucks lessons in humility and generosity, but the teamwork is shoddy, the plays lack surprise and, finally, Juwanna Mann misses more than it hits.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Comic Tommy Davidson, in particular, is hilarious as gangsta rapper Puff Smokey Smoke, who falls for Juwanna and then, in a twist lifted directly from the queen of all drag farces, 1959's "Some Like It Hot," decides he still loves her after she's exposed as Jamal. After all, nobody's perfect.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
This isn't the worst movie Warner Bros. has brought out this summer (Scooby-Doo, boo on you), but for it to work, you have to accept the irredeemable stupidity of almost every character. Time better spent: a Shaquille O'Neal film festival on video.
|
| 40 |
Chicago Reader
The idea of transposing the story to the macho, greedy world of big-time sports is promising, but director Jesse Vaughan delivers only flat dialogue and predictable situations.
|
| 38 |
Charlotte Observer
Excruciatingly flat comedy.
|
| 38 |
Boston Globe
Janice Page
It is Kevin Pollak who steals what there is of a show as Jamal's passive-aggressive, pressure-cooked agent. His comedic timing, particularly given the thinness of the script, is the only genuinely impressive slam dunk this movie has to offer.
|
| 33 |
Portland Oregonian
Jay Boyar
"Tootsie" meets "Hoop Dreams" in Juwanna Mann, and they don't get along. This basketball comedy turns out to be a total drag -- in both senses.
|
| 25 |
Chicago Tribune
It's tempting to call traveling on Juwanna Mann, except it never goes anywhere. This film fouls out.
|
| 25 |
Baltimore Sun
Bottom line: Juwanna Mann is a drag - in every sense of the word.
|
| 25 |
New York Post
It's all so insincere, you can almost imagine the filmmakers rubbing their hands together at the prospect of ripping off the public.
|
| 25 |
Entertainment Weekly
As anyone who has peered in on the actual WNBA for five minutes knows, professional women basketball players are as tough as men. That the film treats this as a joke isn't funny -- it's the height of lame condescension.
|
| 25 |
New York Daily News
A postseason basketball comedy that shoots and misses at a rate that would embarrass even the Los Angeles Clippers.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Women had to struggle for years to launch their own basketball league; it's a shame that the first movie to address their success is a drag comedy, and a lousy one at that.
|
| 20 |
New Times (L.A.)
This limp gender-bender-baller from a first-time director and rookie screenwriter steals wholesale from that 1982's "Tootsie," forgetting only to retain a single laugh.
|
| 20 |
Los Angeles Times
When the outtakes at the end don't make you laugh, what does that tell you about the movie that preceded them?
|
| 20 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Relies on the most time-tested basic moves of farce for laughs that just don't come.
|
| 20 |
Variety
Bringing absolutely no fresh angles to a time-tested formula that's seemed particularly overworked of late.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
If this sounds like "Tootsie" with a ball, well, it is. Screenwriter Bradley Allenstein should be hauled up in writer's court for his shameless cribbing of that far superior comedy. Someone call a foul.
|
| 11 |
Austin Chronicle
This is one that, like a 1am rerun of a late-season Cavs-Grizzlies matchup, deserves to play out in darkness and obscurity.
|
| 10 |
LA Weekly
So what in this high-concept lame-a-thon makes screenwriter Bradley Allenstein think he can diss the Clippers?
|
| 10 |
Village Voice
Laura Sinagra
This flat run at a hip-hop "Tootsie" is so poorly paced you could fit all of Pootie Tang in between its punchlines.
|
| 0 |
Miami Herald
A sad and rote exercise in milking a played-out idea -- a straight guy has to dress up in drag -- that shockingly manages to be even worse than its title would imply.
|
