Welcome to the slam…
Space Jam: A New Legacy
Directed by Malcom D. Lee
Starring LeBron James, Don Cheadle, Cedric Joe, and Bugs Bunny
Look I’m not going to sit here and tell you that first Space Jam is a great film. It’s an enjoyable albeit bizarre film that let’s be honest, only exists because some Air Jordan commercials for kids were pretty popular. Space Jam has its flaws. It’s not a gold standard of cinema, and I’m not going to tell you Space Jame: A New Legacy is a disgrace to its predecessor…
…I am going to tell you that Space Jam: A New Legacy is a disgrace to the very art of cinema.
The film opens up on a young LeBron James, less focused on his basketball game and more on his video games (a Looney Tunes one at that, oh my goodness…) and his coach telling him if he wants to succeed in basketball he has to keep his eye on the ball (I’m not sorry for that pun). Cut to present day after the opening credits (That has the audacity to not reprise the banger title song from the first film) and LeBron (Himself) wants nothing but basketball success for his sons. However his younger son Dom (Joe) is more interested in developing video games (Yeah subtlety just hitting you like a ton of bricks here), much to LeBron’s dismay.
Now the premise of the first Jam is a little bit convoluted (Aliens want to enslave the Looney Tunes for their theme park, they challenge the vertically-impaired aliens to a basketball game, the aliens steal the talent of popular NBA players and get supernaturally steroid’ed up, the Tunes turn to Micheal Jordan for help.) but the premise of this one…oh man. Just bare with me for a minute.
A sentient algorithm named Al-G Rhythm (Cheadle) has control of the Warner Bros’s servers, feeding ideas to the studio executives (Is this commentary on how Hollywood operates these days, or is it just stupid?). He comes up with the idea to place LeBron James into popular WB properties like Batman, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones. LeBron and Dom come into the studio for a pitch meeting, and LeBron, like the rest of us, realizes how stupid that all sounds.
Dom however takes an interest in the studios’ tech, leading to an argument between father and son. An enraged Rhythm takes the opportunity to kidnap them both into the server, excuse me, The Server-Verse (I hate it here). Rhythm takes Dom hostage and promises to return him to LeBron if he can beat him in a basketball game, in the server, which will be live-streamed for the world to see. Rhythm ejects LeBron into the Server-Verse to find his team, and he lands in Tune World, home of the Looney Tunes. Or at least it was.
LeBron finds Bugs Bunny (Voiced here by Jeff Bergman) the single inhabitant of Tune World now, the other Tunes having left to explore other properties-I mean, their potential. Together LeBron and Bugs set out to find their team for the big game, while Rhythm woos Dom to his side with his tech and power, and you know what here’s a good spot to begin my criticisms.
Readers, this is not a film. This is an ad. An ad for HBO Max, and all the beloved IP’s Warners Bros owns (except for one, and I’ll circle back to that). Aside from a plot so convoluted it makes the original Space Jam look well written, the pacing of this film is abysmal. Just a few minutes short of a two-hour runtime, the basketball game (If you could even call it that) doesn’t even get started until we’re halfway through. You may ask “So what does the film do until then?” A good chunk, like a really good chunk of the film is spent on LeBron and Bugs traveling through other WB properties to find the other Looney Tunes. And I guess yeah it’s neat to see Roadrunner & Wile E. Coyote in Mad Max: Fury Road, or Granny and Speedy Gonzales in The Matrix, or…Elmer Fudd in Austin Powers…but why here? Why now? You know what? Just why? And this is a family film right? What kid is going to understand any of these references?
The film is obsessed with throwing everything pop-culture that Warner Bros owns in your face, right down to that crowd of cameos watching the game. Whoever decided on that element of the film seriously needs to be benched because that crowd is more distracting than anything and makes it incredibly hard to focus on the basketball game, the supposed point of the whole film. But like I said you can barely call it a basketball game because it’s really a video game, where the villains literally change the playing field every five seconds. I could see where they were going with it, because during practice LeBron says to the Tunes “Don’t be Looney take the game seriously and play basketball right” and obviously they can’t win if they’re going to play it like a normal basketball game, but ultimately it lowers the stakes and the viewers’ investment.
Remember how I said this was an ad for all of Warner Bros beloved properties except for one? Well that one property, bitterly, ironically, is the Looney Tunes. It is so wrong that not a single Looney Tune shows up until we’re past the twenty-five minute mark, and it is criminally offensive how the film treats them. The film sets up this plot line that the Looney Tunes went their separate ways because Al-G Rhythm said they were better than their usual schtick, but we never learn why he did that. And the breakup is not even addressed when they finally get them all back together. It’s like they were going for The Muppets without any effort or forgetting to write an actual plot. But the big difference between The Muppets and the Looney Tunes is, the latter are not a close-knit family. The Looney Tunes, for decades, have hated each other! Half of them are always trying to kill the other half! And Bugs wouldn’t be sad and mopey that they all left. He would just shrug and be like “Eh they’ll be back, Doc.” They made Bugs like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi only here they *don’t* understand the character (I SAID WHAT I SAID!!!). This film could have been like The Muppets, and a great re-introduction of the Looney Tunes to the general public. I honestly thought this was going to be a commentary on how they’re not relevant anymore. It certainly started out like that when Rhythm says “Send [LeBron] to the rejects”. But no, it’s just flimsy, forced conflict to move the film along to cameo country. This film is almost ashamed of the Looney Tunes and that is its biggest offense.
As far as the animation, the traditionally drawn stuff isn’t bad. Dare I say it almost looks like classic Looney Tunes, but was it just me or was LeBron’s dialogue not matching his lips? The CGI upgrades on the Tunes are alright. It works for some of them, but the rest look off. The special effects in general are pretty distracting like I said because most of them are devoted to that stadium of cameos. I will give the filmmakers props for seamlessly adding the Tunes and LeBron into various other WB films, despite the shrill nature of that whole sequence. There is one particular CGI rendering in the back-half of the film that was the stuff of nightmares. If you know, you know…
What can be said about the performances in this film? LeBron James…he does alright. It’s not a groundbreaking performance by any means but I could tell he was trying. I’ve been told he did much better in Trainwreck. I’m not sure what Don Cheadle was doing in this film but “hamming it up” and “over-the-top” don’t even begin to describe it. As far as the voice cast for the Looney Tunes, a few of them worked but some were real misfires. Eric Bauza works as Daffy, Porky, and Foghorn. Jeff Bergman does a good Sylvester, but his Bugs never feels right. Candi Milo as Granny comes off too much as someone young pretending to be a senior citizen. What was the point of hyping up Lola Bunny in this film if she was barely going to do anything? Seriously all that controversy about changing her appearance, how about how they took away her whole personality? Poor Zendaya got cheated.
What else can I say about Space Jam: A New Legacy? It’s not very funny except for one or two lines. It steals a lot from Hook. It’s not clear if it takes place in the continuity of the first film, because shouldn’t
The Tunes know how to play basketball? It’s a video-game film that happens to feature the Looney Tunes, which makes even less sense than a basketball film that features the Looney Tunes. I think the best way to sum it all up is, the film tries to do way too much, and far too little works. All this film had to do was give us the big-name in basketball alongside the Looney Tunes and that would’ve been enough. Instead it ended up being Warner Bros’s equivalent of Disney’s Ralph Breaks The Internet but worse. It’s shallow. It’s sloppy. It’s insulting to both its audience and some of the most popular animated characters of all time. I am very glad I was able to watch this at home on HBO Max instead of paying $13 or so for a ticket at the theater (Thank you, Tom).
I know people are going to make the argument that “Oh this is a film for kids what did you expect”. Well then explain to me what kid has seen Casablanca or The Matrix? You can make a film for kids, for families, and it could be great…if you put effort into it. I can’t imagine any adult or kid genuinely enjoying this film, because this film doesn’t even know who it was made for.
This film has triggered me enough, I’m going to go cool down before I review Black Widow…but let me just say this. You have Yakko, Wakko and Dot from Animaniacs in the crowd of the game, a game that the Tunes won’t win unless they play it Looney, and you don’t put them on the court?? Coach Daffy Duck should resign….
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