She got game?

>> Love and Basketball fouls out in the first quarter

by JOANNE LATIMER

Love and Basketball is exactly as straightforward as it sounds. It's about two neighbours in the suburbs who grow up as rivals on the basketball court. Monica is a tomboy struggling for respect, while Quincy is a popular player heading for college ball, then the NBA. All of their mutual attraction is channelled into competitive aggression, but we know from the get-go that they'll end up naked.

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood cut her film into quarters, then labelled them. The first quarter could be sliced off with little damage, as could most of the fourth. Her slick footage of high school ball in the second quarter kicks off the film, and it's good, but over 10 minutes has already passed. (That's 10 cutesy minutes of childhood history that audiences could've easily figured out by inference.)

It's hard to believe that this project survived the prestigious Writer's Lab at the Sundance Institute. But it did. And it found its producer, Sam Kitt, from Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks production company. You had to guess that Lee was behind this project somewhere. He's still the go-to director for b-ball films and his support for this project was probably a promotional reflex for the game and women players. Can't fault that.

Despite the linear boredom that ruins the tension in the film, it's still a treat to watch Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps) on screen together. The looks they exchange are the best part of the film. It's too bad these fine actors had to suffer the humiliation of playing a game of strip one-on-one.

Epps also played the track star in John Singleton's Higher Learning, another film that focuses on black athletes at college. At a crucial point in Learning, Ice Cube's character criticizes Epps, saying "Run nigger, run."

As much as I hated Higher Learning, I found myself hoping for a complex moment like that in Love and Basketball. It never came. :

Love and Basketball opens Friday, April 21