By now you’d think you knew what you got with an Adam Sandler sports film. “Happy Gilmore” and “The Waterboy” have conditioned us to expect goofy voices and left hooks from bewildered game show hosts.
But in Hustle, Sandler’s new basketball movie on Netflix, he does a crossover. The film, directed by Jeremiah Zagar, isn’t the farce one would expect. In fact, it’s one of the most structured and loving basketball movies we’ve seen in a long time. With Sandler as a traffic-weary NBA scout and multiple All-Stars in cameos worth multiple teams, “Hustle” has a surprisingly good grip and feel for the game.
As a longtime Knicks fan and pickup player, it’s probably inevitable that Sandler would eventually find his way into a basketball movie. “Uncut Gems,” one of his recent starring roles, as a gambling-addicted jeweler with a big bet on a Boston Celtics game, approached the sport and starred alongside Kevin Garnett. The LeBron James-produced “Hustle,” which debuts Friday, isn’t as distinctive or (thankfully) as stressful as the Josh and Benny Safdie film, but it’s just as rich in atmosphere and finds Sandler in fine dramatic form.
Sandler plays Stanley Sugarman, a Philadelphia 76ers talent scout who spends his days circling the globe searching for the next Dirk Nowitzki. Life on the road has depressed him – his wife Teresa (Queen Latifah) and daughter (Jordan Hull) are used to his absence – and Stanley dreams of rising to the coaching ranks. Or not dreams, exactly.
“Boys in their fifties don’t have dreams,” he says. “They have nightmares and eczema.”
Juancho Hernangomez as Bo Cruz and Adam Sandler as Stanley Sugerman in Hustle.
Stanley’s chance finally comes when the team’s longtime owner, Rex Merrick (Robert Duvall), promotes him to assistant coach. But after Merrick dies, the team is taken over by Vince (Ben Foster), the owner’s brazen son, who previously fell out with Stanley over the potential of a German prospect. Vince gets Stanley back on the road. “You’re a valuable coach,” he tells him. “You are indispensable as a scout.”
Back on the road, Stanley is in Spain when he notices a crowd gathering on the pavement outside a gym. There he sees a construction worker named Bo Cruz (played by NBA player Juancho Hernangómez) whose talent goes off the charts and even plays in Timberlands. Convinced of Bo’s defensive and shooting prowess, Stanley tracks Bo to his home to recruit him for the Sixers. After a falling out with Vince, Stanley devotes himself to getting Bo into the NBA draft. Along the way, Sandler gets his own spin on this fabled sports movie guy, the hard-training coach. “Hustle” doesn’t deviate much from the “Rocky” formula, but it captures something new about the bond between player and coach. It’s also a clever twist that Bo’s greatest talent is his defense and his biggest hurdle to success is keeping his cool.
All of this plays out in the script, written by Taylor Materne and Will Fetters, with a keen sense of detail that will delight NBA fans. There’s even a hint of a sad trade involving Andrea Bargnani that will have Knicks fans laughing (and terrified). The cameos keep coming, including most of the current Sixers list, Allen Iverson, Boban Marjanovi’c, Luka Dokic, Trae Young and some more polished characters, like Bo’s rival draft pick Kermit Wilts, charismatically played by Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards.
This image released by Netflix shows Juancho Hernangomez (left) and Anthony Edwards in a scene from Hustle.
With each appearance, the distance between “Hustle” and the actual NBA is getting smaller and smaller. Stanley’s greatest fear is being left outside the “game,” and “Hustle” is often intoxicatingly close to her. This is a movie where you can see Sandler calling Nowitzki “Schnitzel” on FaceTime and Julius calling him “Dr. J’Erving (a presence still extremely strong) shows up at a playground.
Some might say “Hustle” comes close to NBA commercials, but Zagar, a South Philly native who emerged with the 2018 indie “We the Animals,” frames the pros who crowd his film more like people and gamers than like stars. And Sandler infuses Sugarman not only with a genuine basketball obsession, but also with the usual midlife struggle of only facing ingratitude from an employer after half a lifetime of tireless service. After some less strenuous workouts for Netflix, Sandler is hard at work giving “Hustle” the full press — even though his wardrobe of leotards and mesh shorts may have come straight from his closet.
Sandler’s film would make a solid double headline with another Netflix film, Steven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird, the 2019 drama starring Andre Holland as a sports agent rushing during an NBA lockout. Hustle is a kinder film that’s less interested in delving into the fundamentals of the League. But for a sport that’s only occasionally been authentically captured by movies, “Hustle” has a real flow.
Hustle, a Netflix release, was rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for language. Running time: 117 minutes. Three stars out of four.
-The Associated Press
This image released by Netflix shows Adam Sandler (left) alongside former NBA stars and Brooklyn natives Kenny Smith (center) and Mark Jackson in a scene from Hustle.