We didn’t really need a twenty-five-years later sequel to Space Jam, but we got one anyway. The original was fine for what it was, a goofy kids movie. I guess the best thing that can be said about the new one is that it offers up about the same amount of entertainment value. Do I wish they made better use of the classic Looney Tunes characters? Sure. However, as far as twenty-five-years later sequels go, you could do a lot worse.
Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle) is the creator of the Warner Brothers’ “Serververse” that houses all the studio’s characters. He selects LeBron James to be the face of the Serververse, and when he refuses, Al kidnaps his kid and makes him play basketball against his old man. The kid’s a video game wizard, so he and his team use power-ups and combos to rack up points. James just has, you know, the Looney Tunes gang at his disposal, so he eventually has to beat his son at his own game.
Yes, Space Jam: A New Legacy is basically a dumb kids movie, but there are moments that flirt with putting it over the top, even though it never quite gets there. On the plus side, Daffy Duck gets all the best lines, even if they aren’t exactly laugh out loud funny. The most fun sequence comes when James and Bugs Bunny rescue the Looney Tunes from various Warner Bros. worlds. There’s just something about seeing the Tunes interacting with characters from Mad Max: Fury Road, Austin Powers, and Casablanca that was enough to put a smile on my face. It’s also cool seeing all the Warner Bros. characters making cameos in the stands for the big basketball game. It’s basically Ready Basketball Player One. (Although I would’ve thought that since this one takes place in a computer, they would’ve called it Cyberspace Jam instead of Space Jam: A New Legacy, but what do I know?) Speaking of cameos, there’s at least one really funny celebrity cameo that’s almost worth the price of admission.
Admittedly, the basketball stuff is the worst part, and the father/son drama is weak too, as LeBron is a slightly worse actor than Michael Jordan. Cheadle does what he can with the villain role, although it’s not much. It might not have mattered so much if Bugs and the gang had a bigger part, because ultimately there was just way too much LeBron and not enough Looney Tunes for me.
That said, it’s not bad, if a bit overlong. It was pretty much torn to shreds by critics, but I think it’s slightly better than many gave it credit for. I liked that the algorithm is the villain, which makes sense. I mean every time my wife and kid watch something on a streaming service my algorithm gets messed up, so I can feel that. It also takes balls (no pun intended) to essentially use the studio as the villain as it ruthlessly exploits its own IP for its own sinister purposes. The cruelest thing the algorithm does is needlessly give the classic looking characters a CGI facelift, which is just plain mean if you ask me. (Once he is turned into a “realistic” bunny, Bugs says, “Of course you know, this means war!”)
Also, some kind of award has to be given to whoever was in charge of putting the WB characters in the stands. I mean, you kind of expect to see Fred Flintstone, Batman, The Mask, and King Kong in the bleachers. However, I’d like to shake whoever’s had who put the nun from Ken Russell’s The Devils at center court. Whatever else is clunky and half-baked about the movie, it deserves an extra Half-Star just for that. (According to IMDb, it’s supposed to be The Nun, but it looks a lot more like the hunchbacked Vanessa Redgrave from The Devils than the twisted sister from the Conjuring movies.)
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