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JUWANNA MANN Send This Review to a Friend
Miguel A. Nunez, Jr. is very funny guy in or out of women's clothes, and as long as "Juwanna Mann" is stressing the comedy, there are plenty of laughs, even though nobody is likely to confuse the gags with wit.
Nunez plays Jamal Jeffries, a hotshot basketball player whose runaway ego leads him into nothing but trouble. One night when he gets furious he strips his clothes off in front of the fans, thereby earning an expulsion from the team and the league. Jamal's agent Lorne (Kevin Pollak) drops him too. At least Jamal has his outspoken Aunt Ruby (Jennifer Lewis) to demand that he shape up.
One day, upon seeing a young girl on a backyard court showing basketball talent, Jamal gets a brainstorm. He dresses up like a woman and gets his agent to take him back, this time to audition for a female basketball team, the Charlotte Banshees. A new career is born, as is a situation for an onslaught of cross-dressing comedy. Of course, in real life it would be unlikely that he could pass as a woman for two minutes, but this is comedy, not reality.
Now called Juwanna Mann, the new star still is every bit as obnoxious as before. But as you would expect, he must turn himself around and become a better person by the time the film is over, especially since he has a crush on teammate Michelle (Vivica A. Fox), who thinks she has a reliable girlfriend in whom she can confide. All the while Juwanna is jealous of the smooth but duplicitous ladies' man with whom Michelle is involved.
Apart from the plot that has to be worked out, there's plenty of fun in Juwanna having to keep up the disguise, shower with the girls, feel them up when he can, and ward off an aggressive, hot-to-trot suitor with gleaming gold teeth, a predator named Puff Smokey Smoke (Tommy Davidson), who talks in rap and is grossly funny. Had the film, written by Bradley Allenstein and directed by Jesse Vaughan, adhered strictly to such comedy, it would hold up more consistently, as when a teammate of Juwanna remarks, "She sure has balls." A Warner Brothers release.
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