"Crossover" is an urban morality tale set in a fantasyland version of street basketball. It's about life choices and love and self-discipline and taking the hard way through life when everybody knows that the NBA is "every black boy's dream."

Nothing original here — a preachy, speechy, slang-slinging script, a good-looking cast, and a version of basketball that is all about the showboating and the easy money.

Wayne Brady, doing his most interesting work since those funny cameos (Wayne Brady as closet thug) on Dave Chapelle's TV show, is Vaughan, the ex-agent who is now Detroit's kingpin bookmaker. He runs fancy "street" games that even the cops bet on.

But these aren't the gritty, grimy hustles of "White Men Can't Jump." The games are staged in what looks like an old railroad station, under lights, with scoreboards, cheerleaders, uniforms, fans and a DJ. Street? Only the games themselves, with their trash-talk, few rules (walking, palming the ball, etc., are ignored), almost no-fouls-called, and no white boys on the court, are street.

Hey, it's the NBA!

Anthony Mackie of "She Hate Me" is Tech, a struggling, ill-tempered, twentysomething hoping to get his GED and make his mark on the court, maybe scoring a gig with a European team.

"Gotta get some light on my game," he says, meaning attention, publicity.

Wesley Jonathan is Cruise, his supremely gifted 18-year-old best friend, the guy with the real gifts and a UCLA scholarship. He's middle class, and wants to be a doctor, and plans to just use basketball as a means to an end.

Vaughan runs his games and dangles carrots in front of Cruise, trying to make him turn pro. He puts down Tech and his team ("Enemy of the State") and lets his favorites, Platinum, pummel them on the court on any given night.

Temptation arrives in the form of girls who see ballplayers as a ticket out of Detroit, at least one of whom was "born with larceny in her heart."

The story and its choices are tired (did you see "He Got Game"?), but the direction and editing are flashy in the extreme. Many, many edits, shots of characters doing their lines seen in the rear view mirror of a motorcycle, real kid-with-a-new-camera stuff.

Writer-director Preston Whitmore, who wrote the preachy Laurence Fishburne thriller "Fled," has more business behind the camera than at the word processor. His slang-laced dialogue is so overdone it's laughable.

"She got you open like the freeway at 4 in the morning."

"I come to break him and he gone be broke."

Got it.

That alone doesn't give the movie edge or street cred. "Crossover" is just another fable about love and basketball as a way out of hard times. Brady's not mean enough, Mackie's not angry enough and the games and setting aren't gritty enough to let this urban sports drama cross over into something a general audience would care to see.

<b>TITLE:</b> "Crossover"<b>DIRECTOR:</b> Preston Whitmore<b>CAST: </b>Anthony Mackie, Wayne Brady, Wesley Jonathan, Alecia Jai Fears, Little JJ<b>RATED: </b>PG-13 (sexual content and some language)<b>GRADE: </b>2 Stars (out of 5)