The Sixth Man (1997) Reviews

• Superstition

  Miz0722011-12-05

  As a child I loved the movie The 6th Man. I probably hold the world record for the most viewings of this movie so for that reason I think I should write a review of it. As I said I loved this movie as a kid but now that I'm older I realize the many flaws it has, though I still understand what I liked so much about it when I was younger. The 6th Man is a rare combination of comedy and drama. It doesn't transition between the two very well and I think that accounts for its less than stellar average rating. For the first 30 minutes or so The 6th Man is a great drama with some of the best basketball action you'll ever see. Antoine is a likable character and dies tragically. Kenny deals with his brother's death. A very heartbreaking story. It could have been a great drama if it had stuck to that. Then it violently switches to comedy, back to drama, and back to comedy so many times I am sure that is what turns off a lot of people. It doesn't turn me off, but it's one of the clear weaknesses. After the movie switches to a comedy you are given a lot of hit and miss jokes, mostly involving invisible Antoine doing poltergeist stunts and freaking people out. Some of the jokes are hilarious. Personally I love the scene where Antoine goes into the painting and kicks the guy fishing into the pond. Its undoing in the comedic aspect of this movie is that it goes back to the poltergeist stuff too often. It becomes repetitive and it takes away from the serious drama that we saw for the first 30 minutes. The basketball action in The 6th Man is among the best you will ever see. A lot of the actors in this movie were basketball players and went on to never act again. It shows both in the quality of their acting and the quality of the basketball. Travis Ford (Danny O'Grady) and Jack Karuletwa (Luther LaSalle) both put on lousy acting performances but were good on the court. Lorenzo Orr (Malik Major) also never acted again, but he seemed like he had potential as a comedic actor. The 6th Man is a very worth watching drama/comedy. The main undoing of the movie is that it seemed like it couldn't decide which one it wanted to be. As a fan of basketball, a fan of dramas, and a fan of comedies I can understand why I still enjoy watching this. It brings something to the table in all three areas.

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• MY FAVORITE MOVIE

  katers0142002-07-07

  This is my favorite movie, i watch it all the time! it has a great plot and i never get sick of it i repeat all the lines and songs while i am watching it, its great. and when i found out it was going to be on tv for the first time i got extremely excited because i knew people would get to see how great of a movie it really is, its funny, touching, sad, and inspiring all in one, i still get tears in my eyes every time i watch it and laugh at all the same moments this movie is great, super, fantastic, and terrific and i recommend it to EVERYONE especially basketball

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• A Great Movie

  Waltdog2000-06-21

  This movie is excellent. It is hilarious and has great drama. Kadeem Hardison and Marlon are just as convincing as brothers as Marlon is with his real life brother Shawn on "The Wayans Bros." The acting was great, the comedy was great, and the writing was great. This is the film that made me look at Marlon Wayans as more than just a funny guy, but also as a very talented actor. I give this movie a 10.

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• Poltergeist-lite

  JoeytheBrit2006-10-25

  Released to coincide with the conclusion of the actual NCAA championships back in 1997, The 6th Man combines ghost and sports themes with poor results. Mixing special effects we've all seen before with the clichéd coming-back-from-an-impossible-position-in-the-final finale that has about as much uplifting excitement as the last coming-back-from, etc, that we all probably saw less than a month ago, it has only a couple of well-acted scenes, and a good chemistry between screen brothers Marlon Wayans and Kadeem Hardison in the early scenes, to recommend it. Marlon Wayans plays Kenny Tyler who, with his brother, Antoine (Kadeem Hardison,) form a formidable basketball partnership. Content to live in his flashy ball-hogging brother's shadow, Kenny suddenly finds himself thrust into the spotlight when Antoine dies unexpectedly, and soon finds himself struggling to perform. Only when Antoine returns in ghostly form do the Huskies team for which Kenny plays recover their old form and storm their way to the finals of the NCAA championship. Despite realising from the outset that this movie is going to follow a strictly formulaic path – the brother's coaching pop talks inspirational twaddle for the first five minutes, clearly marking himself out for an early grave – the movie is surprisingly quite effective in the early scenes when it concentrates on establishing the relationship between the brothers, and Antoine's untimely death ("I'll come back", he promises prophetically). But, upon Antoine's return, the movie abandons any pretence of pathos to subject us to an hour of largely unfunny poltergeist-lite hi-jinks both on and off the baseball court. Only Kenny can see his dead brother, so we get plenty of scenes in which he hugs the air, or twists himself into tortuous shapes as he and Antoine fight, much to the bewilderment of his team-mates and largely redundant romantic interest (Michael Michele). Barely funny the first time, by the end of the movie Wayan's mugging (he seems to be doing a Will Smith impersonation through most of the movie) soon proves to be extremely irritating. And Kenny and his mates are just a little late in finding the moral enlightenment to bar Antoine from helping them to win the championship by cheating. Getting to the final by having their ghostly sixth man stealing the ball from their competitors, or inhabiting their bodies, is fine it seems. But actually winning the final that way is a big no-no for some reason. Seems to me that when the revelation that, hey, cheating is wrong! finally sank into their thick skulls they would have forfeited the final as they shouldn't really have been there anyway. But this is a Hollywood movie, aimed at teens who, as every Hollywood producer knows, have no perceptive or critical faculties. There are two or three good scenes in this movie, which is damning enough; even more perverse is the fact that they're all the ones that are played straight. The 'comedy' here just doesn't work at all.

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• Highly underrated

  the_ref1998-12-28

  I saw this movie on a bus - a captive audience. The sound was too low and the screen was really small, but I still found it to be a touching comedy with a lot of heart. It was advertised as a zany "ghost basketball player haunts brother - wackiness ensues," when it is actually a strong story of the relationship between two brothers who grew up as best friends and teammates, and what happens when one of their lives is tragically cut short.

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