Somehow, in the year of George Harrison’s sweet lord, 2023, heavy-handed and insulting sports biopics like Sweetwater are still being made.

From the dopey, 1991-set framing device where Chicago cab driver Nat Clifton (Everett Osborne) tells his sports journalist fare (Jim Caviezel, of all people) his life story, to the mind-numbing flashback revealing the source of Nat’s titular nickname, to his tension-free journey to becoming the first Black man to sign an NBA contract, the film is a blast from the past in the worst possible ways.

In both his tepid screenplay and anonymous filmmaking, direct-to-DVD specialist Martin Guigui approaches Clifton’s story with a disrespect for audience intelligence, spelling out each detail while refusing to engage viewers on a visual level.

Though there’s plenty of inherent intrigue in Clifton’s rise from the Harlem Globetrotters to the New York Knicks in the twilight of his playing days, Guigui spends a bizarrely generous amount of time on the white men who shepherded the power forward to the land’s top league.

As historic characters portrayed by Jeremy Piven, Cary Elwes, and Kevin Pollack gaze upon the Black ballplayers with a condescending air of superiority, all but patting themselves on the back for opportunities they’re providing, the over-lit cinematography and Guigui’s and Jeff Cardoni’s sappy, string-heavy score reaffirm that toxic attitude and cheapen the athletes’ talents. Meanwhile, Eric Roberts and other recognizable faces pop up as stock racist types, unimaginatively conveying the opposition to racial progress. 

Occasionally, some of the basketball scenes elicit a flicker of excitement, only to recede just as quickly into the chasm of nothingness from which they sprung. Reeking of lazy cultural appropriation — indeed, nearly everyone involved behind the scenes is white — Sweetwater is the kind of overly sentimental, emotionally bankrupt movie that one would have thought parody films, or at least simple good taste, would have discouraged in the 21st century.

Even worse, it’s an insult to Clifton’s legacy, one so blatant that everyone involved should be embarrassed.

Grade: D. Rated PG-13. Now playing at Regal Biltmore Grande

(Photo: Ian Fisher/Briarcliff Entertainment)