For Your Consideration: "Uncle Drew" for Best Hair and Make-Up

Scene from Uncle Drew
This past weekend, a film opened in theaters that proved that Oscar season can come at any time, popping out of the bushes with a big surprise. Just a few summers ago, it happened with Mad Max: Fury Road. Now it's come for an even more obtuse target: the NBA-lead comedy Uncle Drew. That's right, a film about a group of elder statesmen whooping up on young b'ball players has come for you, Oscar gold. If you will, for just a second, sit down on the social media stoop and listen up, you'll soon understand why it is that this unassuming film featuring a bunch of NBA legends is deserving of some serious Oscar gold. All you have to do is wait until after the jump for the flavor to be thrown in your ear, and soon the dropped knowledge will all become clear. 
The proverbial question seems to be: how do you get nominated for a Best Hair and Make-Up Oscar? If the track record is based solely on this past year, the answer is simple: stick people in grotesque amounts of make-up. The film Darkest Hour won the category upon turning Gary Oldman into a man stuck in a life-sized Winston Churchill-esque prison. It was the ultimate moment of subversion when Oldman and the make-up team both won Oscars that night, as neither excelled at bringing the best of the other out. In fact, those were shouts of Oldman orating through the make-up, watching the flabbiness jiggle as he tried to find some way to emote. Alas, he was a man stuck in a prison of make-up that couldn't so much as bring nuance to his eyebrows, nose, or cheeks. All it did was make him look fat and old. But hey, if it's good enough for The Academy.
Or what about the 2011 film The Iron Lady, which found a way to turn Meryl Streep into a differently attractive Meryl Streep? It was an attempt to make her look like Margaret Thatcher, but again it was the performance that deserved more of the credit, with the make-up not only hogging away authenticity, but also a prize from the now not arguably robbed film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Aparently turning everyone into hairy hobbits with goofy noses is passe, an old style of film making that shouldn't be recognized. Yes, it does seem like the route to go with Best Hair and Make-Up Oscar prognostication is to go as vanilla as possible. If it's based on a person, better for it. If it's trapping a performance that would be better without it, then you pretty much should be walking to the stage right now.
Which raises the question: how is Uncle Drew any less of an achievement than Darkest Hour and The Iron Lady? If anything, it's more of an accomplishment because of how it takes beloved icons and ages them with grey hairs, wrinkly faces, and convinces us that they're old. It's no different from imagining Streep or Oldman as different people, and in fact is more impressive because it's done on a far more expansive scope. The world won't be the same again after seeing Shaquille O'Neal with his hair whited out and the aging lines on his face. Uncle Drew the character won't either, as he manages to convey the struggles of aging sports heroes with no more than a glance and telling some youngster to "hold my nuts." Yes, it's a category that hasn't really been explored before, but that's what the Oscars are about right now. B'ball players donned to look older should definitely be able to compete with quote unquote professionals who sabotage decent performances. If anything, Uncle Drew is a revelation because it improves Shaq's performance, not delineates it to more vanilla sanctions.
Considering the modern shift in The Academy to have more diverse members (which, fun fact, doesn't include recent winner Kobe Bryant on account of him being considered "problematic"), the cinema they have chosen best reflects this. Moonlight showed that there were new and innovative ways to tell African American stories. Get Out proved that there were ways to subvert expectations on race relations. Uncle Drew joins that class as a film that strives to reinvent how older black athletes are seen in pop culture. They aren't old and decrepit to the point of only ever being able to endorse products by standing with a shoe/food staple in their hand. No, they're allowed to be just as rad as the younger generation. Considering that Get Out's (other) breakout star Lil Rey Howrey is also in the film, it only adds clout to the film's goal to be just as radical and different as possible.
Let's face it, Best Hair and Make-Up Oscar winners have a baffling track record. When films like Darkest Hour win, they give off the impression that hard work of fantasy and sci-fi films aren't as great. Sure, there's the occasional Mad Max: Fury Road winner, but why is it that the category is being given to films with only one real good example of hair and make-up? It's not creative to make people look like something that exists. It's interesting, but it has to be convincing as well. That's why genre cinema often is more impressive if allowed to go to compelling places. By throwing them a bone every once in awhile, it creates that sense of change that the Academy oh so desperately wants. Considering that The Shape of Water recently won Best Picture, there's a good chance that the change is imminent. 


So please, make The Academy a lot more interesting in 2018. Uncle Drew is a film that is compelling because it plays with hair and make-up in fashions that far exceed what was expected from Darkest Hour or The Iron Lady. In fact, it's more impressive because it's not a category about performance. No, it's about how convincingly these people look like something different. Uncle Drew does that often enough to deserve some sort of prize. Step aside Churchill and Thatcher, Uncle Drew has come to steal your thunder next year. His posse is far more engaging and different than whatever it is you did. Remember, this isn't a judgment of the film, but of the hair and make-up work. It more than deserves some credit for shifting perceptions of these icons in meaningful and memorable ways. 

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