‘Ballers’ chronicles life off the gridiron
Published 2:35 pm Friday, June 19, 2015
HBO’s new half-hour show, “Ballers,” should be instantly recognizable. (Hint: It’s basically another “Entourage,” set in the world in professional football instead of the film industry.) Just as familiar is the tone of moral ambivalence: With one hand, “Ballers” seeks to celebrate the excesses and exploitations of the NFL, and with the other (weaker) hand, it attempts to indict the same system.
Dwayne Johnson stars as Spencer Strasmore, a recently retired player trying to reinvent himself as a money manager in Miami, where pro ballers (not just Dolphins) and their wives, mistresses and hangers-on flock like preening birds. Hired at an investment firm by a fame-obsessed jerk of a boss (Rob Corddry), Spencer is under pressure to pull all his connections and persuade top players to invest their millions with the firm.
His big target is a rising Dallas Cowboys star, Vernon (Donovan Carter), who is beholden to his childhood friend and manager, Reggie (London Brown), and a large retinue of relatives and friends who’ve quickly spent all his rookie money. Spencer and Vernon’s agent (Troy Garity) work to get a $71 million, five-year contract renewal, but there’s still a danger their client will ditch them. “Ballers” makes clear that the only change in the nearly 20 years since Cuba Gooding Jr. coaxed Tom Cruise to scream “Show me the money!” in “Jerry Maguire” is that there is so much more money involved now — and that “bling” is still a word.
Anticipating its audience’s desires, “Ballers” mainly fixates on cars, yachts, houses, topless women and raunchy sex — and a nominal amount of football. It’s hard to tell whether “Ballers” means to make the high life seem as rote and empty as it does (my hunch is that the producers and writers are given more to bouts of envy than sermonizing), but the show and its actors are so much better when zooming in on serious matters, such as the possibility that the Vicodin-popping Spencer suffers from neurological damage from his years on the field.
Better still is a storyline that seems more of an afterthought, in which Spencer’s friend Charlie (Omar Miller), newly retired from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, takes an entry-level sales job at a Chevrolet dealership — which is a more interesting story as the basis for a series than the ceaseless joy rides, hookers and blow that “Ballers” feels obligated to provide.
— Hank Stuever, The Washington Post.
“Ballers”
Premieres tonight, 10 p.m., HBO (cable)
