`White Men Can't Jump,' But These Women Can Act

XX 1/2 "White Men Can't Jump," with Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, Rosie Perez, Tyra Ferrell. Written and directed by Ron Shelton. Aurora Village, City Centre, Everett Mall, Factoria, Gateway, Grand Cinemas Alderwood, Kent, Oak Tree, Overlake, Totem Lake, Valley drive-in. "R" - Restricted, due to language. --------------------------------------------------------------- Ron Shelton writes the talkiest sports comedies ever made. Still, few who saw "Bull Durham" or "The Best of Times" complained about Shelton's literate jocks, whose gift of gab added spice to their athletic and amorous pursuits.

Having already taken on baseball and football, Shelton has now turned to basketball with "White Men Can't Jump," a clever but overconfident script about two hoop hustlers who focus on Venice Beach's basketball courts. At two hours, it's just too long for its skimpy story, and Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes don't provide quite enough star power to keep it moving forward.

Not that they're inept. It's just that both actors seem more comfortable in supporting roles at this point, and Shelton tends to write showier roles for women. Susan Sarandon, not Kevin Costner or Tim Robbins, had the best part in "Bull Durham," and the football widows in "The Best of Times" got all the quotable lines.

Snipes and Harrelson are essentially helpless here while Rosie Perez, a Brooklyn native playing Harrelson's obsessive, intelligent, vodka-swilling girlfriend, walks off with the movie. Best-known as Spike Lee's girlfriend in "Do the Right Thing" and as choreographer for the television series, "In Living Color," Perez gives a sizzling performance in a role Shelton wrote for an upper-class white woman.

Her philosophical speeches about the relative merits of winning and losing, and her conviction that her encyclopedic knowledge has predestined her to become a winner on the game show "Jeopardy," carry an extra poignancy when Perez delivers them. When her character gets upset over Harrelson's gambling on the court, or she becomes frightened because they're being pursued by ferocious debt collectors, Perez plays her scenes with a fine frenzy that's both convincing and funny.

Tyra Ferrell, who played Ice Cube's strong-willed mother in "Boyz N the Hood," doesn't get as much screen time to play Snipes' no-nonsense wife, but she does make the most of it. She's especially eloquent when she insists on getting the family out of "Vista View apartments, which has no vista and no view," and when she announces to her husband that they will buy the house they've just looked at.

A former professional baseball player, Shelton isn't kidding when he says that "my movies are just a bunch of guys messing around while women get on with the real business of life." This is true even of his one nonsports movie, "Blaze," which is less about Louisiana's governor, Earl Long, than it is about the stripper who eventually dominated Long's personal and political life.

Perhaps Shelton should have handed the film over to Perez and Ferrell, and positioned their men in the background. Certainly the ending, which is surprisingly bleak for such a lighthearted film, suggests that he's more in sympathy with them.

So does the threat of macho violence on the courts. At one point, the hustlers are attacked by a man waving a razor. During a tense living-room confrontation between Harrelson and Snipes, their anger is diffused only by a televised basketball game that distracts these overgrown adolescents.

There's also an edge to some of the racial taunting between the two men, including a running gag about Jimi Hendrix's music, the difference between "listening" and "hearing," and the inability of whites to tell the difference.

Shelton retired from playing outdoor court games in Los Angeles after a player was shot and killed several years ago, and he seems to want to say something about the danger of playing con games in these situations. But it never quite gets said, and the movie drifts into more mundane matters.

At its best, "White Men Can't Jump" gives two talented actresses a chance to shine. At worst, it's just somewhat less coherent and compelling than Shelton's previous work.