Futuresport

Overview: Set in the far distant future of 2025 (although somebody fucked up and the DVD box says 2005 instead), the future sport of Futuresport has replaced all old dumb regular sports with hoverboards, electrified balls, shredder claw gloves, and people pretending to be Jamaican. Meanwhile, a violent wing of Hawaiian separatist terrorists blows everything up, calls everybody haoles, literally writes a Hawaiian declaration of independence, and then promptly forgets all about any of that because some beefcake on TV challenges them to a winner-take-all game of Futuresport.

Directed By: Ernest R. Dickerson, 1998.

The Case For: Features an all-star cast of Wesley Snipes, Dean Cain, Wesley Snipes, Vanessa Williams, Wesley Snipes, and strong supporting roles by Wesley Snipes and Wesley Snipes.

The Case Against: The two main characters are named Obike Fixx and Tre "The Pharaoh" Ramzey.

Long ago, before movie remakes and reboots became trendy, Hollywood was content with the humble ripoff. Enter Futuresport, by way of 1975 James Caan murdersport movie Rollerball, although at least it's a more original ripoff than the 2002 remake of Rollerball, which despite the glowing presence of Jean Reno managed to snag a 2.9/10 IMDB rating. We may end up reviewing that one someday, but we have to share the gospel of Futuresport with you first. Have you heard the Good News?

Futuresport is, at its core, a love story. Not the bipolar love story between the hunky star athlete protagonist and his boring love-hate reporter girlfriend, though--that's more like a flimsy veneer slapped on at the last minute to distract us from how stupid the rules of playing Futuresport actually are. No, Futuresport is the story of one man, Wesley Snipes, and his undying devotion to his one true love and soul mate, Wesley Snipes.

Well, this is getting awkward. So how about that titular Futuresport? "Hey guys, what should we call our new death sport?" "Last time I checked, we live in the future...how about...Futuresport?" "Genius!" At least Futuresport manages to live up to its stupid name by being more pointlessly eXtreme than the fake space football from Starship Troopers, with rules almost as arbitrary and stupid as quidditch. Only instead of having flip-six three holes or flapjack twelve bellies or a little gold ball that completely negates the purpose of playing the game in the first place, Futuresport pretty much just has big sticks for players to beat each other to death with and a ball that electrocutes you for holding onto it for too long^[1]. Although while we're on the subject of quidditch and existential pointlessness, don't miss the goalie sticks that are twice the size of the little goal but which are never used successfully in the entire movie.

Okay, so there's no joy or reason to be found in watching the actual sport, but maybe it's like wrestling and it's all a flimsy excuse for lots of wacky characters and overblown drama. Let's check out the supporting cast of sports movie stereotypes and assorted freakshows (you decide which are which):

• The gruff yet loveable Coach Gets Murdered as a Plot Device
• The brash young German hotshot challenger
• The overconfident celebrity jock superstar who learns a valuable lesson about humility and becomes a real boy champion in the process
• The hardass Asian chick with an eyepatch
• The dark, brooding, randomly cruel Hawaiian separatist terrorist with Maori tattoos all over his face
• Rastafarian street warfare too-cool-for-anything Jamaican soul godfather and high priest-king Wesley Snipes
• The dumb guy (he dumb)

[1] http://youtu.be/i4ClOF7c5VY