OxfordPress.com

Grade: C

Verdict: It dribbles along, but it's no 3-pointer.

Details: Starring (Lil') Bow Wow, Morris Chestnut, Robert Forster, Crispin Glover, Eugene Levy, Jonathan Lipnicki and several NBA stars as themselves. Directed by John Schultz. Rated PG for brief mild language. One hour, 40 minutes.

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Review: "Like Mike," starring the Artist Formerly Known as Lil' Bow Wow and half the National Basketball Association, isn't a complete dog, but it's nothing to bark about either.

(Sorry--had to squeeze in at least one pooch pun. That's it, I promise.)

Bow Wow, as the rapper is now known -- he's dropped the Lil' from his moniker, so don't confuse him with rapper Lil' Romeo, who remains little -- stars as Calvin Cambridge, an orphan who gets his dream of playing pro basketball thanks to a magical pair of sneakers that may or may not have belonged to Michael Jordan.

Director John Schultz's movie is as lame and predictable as you'd imagine, and it's chock full of orphanage cliches: There's Murph (Jonathan Lipnicki), a meek, bespectacled kid who gets picked on; Ox (Julius Ritter), a bully who has a change of heart; and an unctuous schemer who runs the place, played with singular creepiness by Crispin Glover.

But kids and pre-teens will flock to "Like Mike" -- after they've seen "Men In Black II," of course -- because Bow Wow is enormously popular right now. You can't turn on MTV or BET without running into the video for his hit "Take Ya Home."

And it's a family film that means well, with positive messages about teamwork and forgiveness and wearing appropriate headgear while riding a scooter.

Calvin gets his shot at basketball stardom when he's chosen randomly to play against his hero, Tracy Reynolds (Morris Chestnut), during halftime at a Los Angeles Knights game. He happens to be wearing a pair of Nikes from the Salvation Army with the initials "MJ" inside of them, which he believes Jordan once wore, thereby giving him mad hoop skills.

His performance is so impressive that the general manager (Eugene Levy) and the coach (Robert Forster) ask him to join the team -- if only for the publicity and to boost sagging attendance.

Tracy becomes Calvin's reluctant mentor while the team's on the road, so you just know that by the end of the movie, Calvin will have taught Tracy some valuable lessons, too.

There is a cute scene, though, in which Tracy helps Calvin with his geometry homework by explaining the 1998 Chicago Bulls' triangle offense. (Screenwriters Michael Elliott and Jordan Moffet clearly love this game.) And it's remotely amusing to see 4-foot-8-inch Calvin strip the ball from Stephon Marbury and dunk on David Robinson.

The presence of those NBA stars and others -- including Allen Iverson, Chris Webber, Jason Kidd and Vince Carter -- theoretically should be a draw, if only for the car-wreck fascination of watching basketball players try to look comfortable on camera. Most of these guys lack the screen presence of, say, Shaquille O'Neal in "Kazaam," or Gheorghe Muresan in "My Giant," and should stick to their day jobs.

Bow Wow is a cute little pup and he has sufficient presence and basketball talent, but he should stick to his day job, too. After playing bit parts in "All About the Benjamins" and the MTV movie "Carmen: A Hip-Hopera," this is his first starring role, and he's painfully self-aware. That's OK in a lil' music video, but it's hard to watch on the big screen.

— Christy Lemire, The Associated Press