2021 Reviews – Space Jam: A New Legacy

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I’m just trying to think of a movie that I have looked forward to more – SPECTRE? The Dark Knight Rises or Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; maybe. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens; definitely. The point is, I have been a Space Jam fan for nearly all my life. A couple of years back, I had an idea for a sequel starring Usain Bolt; I would have called it Race Jam, with a climax being a relay involving Taz, Road Runner, Speedy Gonzalez and Bolt, as well as combining all track and field events with a celebration of Olympians and Looney Tunes together – can you imagine Foghorn Leghorn training to pole vault; hilarious. So when I heard about this movie, I thought about boycotting it out of protest because my idea was so good. But no, Space Jam is basketball, and with fierce debate raging as to whether Michael Jordan or LeBron James is the greatest NBA player of all time, it makes sense for LeBron to level up and match MJ with his own bout with the Looney Tunes. If this movie sucks, I’m going to need a hug.

LeBron James and his son Dom (Cedric Joe) are invited to Warner Bros. studios for a movie pitch that would see LeBron James inserted into classic Warner Bros. movies, using technology made possible by a computer algorithm, personalised as Al-G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle). Before all this, there’s already tension at home, as LeBron pushes Dom to be a great basketball star like himself, but Dom is naturally more gifted and enthusiastic about creating video games, and wants to pursue that interest. Dom likes the pitch, but as LeBron rejects it, Al-G gets mad, luring Dom and LeBron to the Warner Bros. main servers where they are digitally sucked inside. Al-G berates LeBron for not giving him a shot, and challenges LeBron to put a team together ahead of a virtual viral basketball game.

Notice how I didn’t use the words ‘Looney Tunes’ in my description? When I think Space Jam, I think of Michael Jordan, Looney Tunes and basketball – for Space Jam: A New Legacy, I feel like the Looney Tunes and basketball play fourth and fifth fiddle to Warner Bros., video gaming and the relationship between LeBron James and his son. I rewatched the original Space Jam a few days ago and I was shocked to discover that the Looney Tunes don’t really appear in the movie for the first ten minutes; here, they’ve got to be absent for the first twenty-five. Then they don’t have anything to do with LeBron James coming to play basketball, nor do they have any personal stakes in the basketball game until they are about to play. I’m sitting in the theatre and I’m thinking that for some movie reboots or sequels, maybe the template doesn’t need to change – it’s been twenty-five years since a Space Jam movie, so just bring us what we love for a new generation. Changes will happen, and change what you may, but anything you do change will be held against you in the court of public opinion. Personally, I expected the Looney Tunes to be held in more reverence, and I think this movie is really superficial in its storytelling, seeing an opportunity for some wider brand marketing, and running at it more ravishingly than its cartoon coyote.

Having said that, there’s certainly things to really like out of Space Jam: A New Legacy; most of them are small moments, a split-second reference here and there, but bigger things include the depiction of LeBron James’ basket-balling journey, although that harkens back to the young Michael Jordan shooting baskets in the original which works. I was also ride-or-die with Dom for a long time too (this Dom, not the other Dom), as he seemed like a cool kid with an intriguing talent. But again, personally, I would have had him leave Al-G at the time he realised the pesky algorithm was planning to warp his avatars of NBA stars to use against his father, and had LeBron and his son on the same basketball team from the beginning – the movie can still have the same lesson, where this presentation of the basketball game is so beyond LeBron’s skillset, that he must listen to Dom’s instruction to win, and he learns to respect and understand Dom in the process. It’s a small change, but at least father and son aren’t adversaries, which I think makes for a better family-friendly story, that doesn’t halt the thrill of the basketball game for a flat tear-jerking moment as the pair reconnect mid-match and doesn’t detract from the perils of the Goon Squad. I also applaud Al-G as an upgraded and worthy antagonist for the movie.

As the movie takes so long to get to the basketball game, and around the time of seeing cartoon Alfred and Lois Lane randomly show up in the window of the same train, I realised that this movie’s main agenda was going to be creating ‘reference city’. I’ve already seen one commentor refer to this movie as ‘Ready Player Jam’ which couldn’t be more accurate. Warner Bros. already did a similar thing with The Lego Batman Movie too, where they threw everything at the screen as quickly as possible and I wasn’t here for that. I was ready to throw the concept in the bin, but then Wile. E Coyote and the Road Runner appear in Mad Max: Fury Road, and Elmer Fudd fits into Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, and I grinned like a welfare kid with my own ice-cream cone, conceding that, okay, they have something. So how about Al-G has destroyed Tune Land, deciding 2D-animation is obsolete, and the surviving Looney Tunes have fled, forced to find refuge in other cinematic universes – I didn’t really understand why the Tunes weren’t at their homeland other than they now had other options, which was kind’ve sad, and every time Bugs Bunny hinted that the Looney Tunes were all back together, I cringed because there were so many missing. Have LeBron James get dumped into the cartoon DC World, tricking us into thinking it’s Tune Land, and meet Bugs Bunny there. Then later, after Bugs Bunny convinces LeBron that the Looney Tunes are the team he needs, as they have experience alongside an NBA star (wink-wink) and are just looney enough to give him an edge, LeBron negotiates for the reinstatement of Tune Land if the Tune Squad win. Suddenly, the Tunes have stakes in this fight, longing for their home back, and a personal angle against Al-G. It’s better than Al-G randomly tossing out there that, oh yeah, if the team lose, they will be deleted; little changes.

Speaking of world building, I should say, I avoided this trailer like a COVID hotspot, but I did see a production still that had the Warner Bros. catalogue courtside for the basketball game. I saw Pennywise. I saw the Mask. And I saw the Batman Returns’ Penguin. I saw what looked like a great celebration of the Warner Bros. catalogue and I was super excited to see how the movie would do it. In practice, I hated it – they look like cosplay, waving their hands like lunatics, and I finally understand the argument against George Lucas and his ‘dense’ decision-making for Geonosis in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. And who are these conglomerate of Warner Bros. faces barracking for? Al-G? Why? Do they hate the Looney Tunes? Why would Warner Bros. have a movie where the other characters hate the Looney Tunes? I can’t forget the Mr. Freeze rip-off looking over Al-G’s shoulder, looking nothing like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and one shot of Trinity from The Matrix hooting and hollering that’s so out of character. As I’ve said, this is a good idea in theory, and maybe by the time Warner Bros. realised it looked like shit, they were stuck with it. It smacks of that famous Jurassic Park quote where the movie is so preoccupied with ‘jamming’ in as many references as they could, they never stopped to think about if they should; as a celebration of the Warner Bros. catalogue, it undercuts the intrinsic value of what so many of these characters mean for a dazzling few minutes of wow factor…. Ah, maybe that’s all it wants to be, as the movie is quick to tell you how much fun everything should be, despite the fact that it gives you time to dwell on deeper emotions when Dom and Dad reunite and the Looney Tunes cry. And in fairness, the original Space Jam cheaped-out with its background audience too, (a favourite game of mine when revisiting Space Jam is to look for as many repeated Penelope cats as I can find).

I’m completely aware that I am attached to the nostalgia of the original, and I was always going to view this through my childhood-coloured glasses. I think if I was ten-years-old and didn’t know any better I might really like this movie, as it moves so quickly it’s hard not to like it. I really feel like the Looney Tunes are shoe-horned into this movie as an essential ingredient of Space Jam, where the movie’s world-building would prefer to stretch over the entire WB catalogue to advertise HBO Max. But alternatively, I liked Scoob! for its wide-reaching world-building across the Hanna-Berbera universe, sacrificing the short-story narrative of a traditional Scooby-Doo mystery for something larger, so I know it comes down to a personal preference. It’s a new world and things change; I don’t even like the trend to digitise animation with so much detail that fur and feathers are a given (Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, hit me up); I prefer the classic smoothness and vibrant colour of animation, myself (Tom & Jerry had my back). I dare say that I reckon one day the social consensus will swing back around to 2D-animation, just like how the efforts of practical effects once again reign over CGI. And watching Space Jam again a couple days ago, I noticed how the ‘90s upgraded the Looney Tunes animation too, adding shading and such, so that’s just how it goes – and I like that in Space Jam: A New Legacy, we can just blame Al-G for warping our Looney Tunes designs for the game.

The score I’m about to give is for when I think a movie has potential but doesn’t put it together, and in this case, Space Jam: A New Legacy is very much that for me.

3.0

P.S. I guess Pepe Le Pew is a pro at that step-back shot that makes the game glitch and characters get deleted. And LeBron James is a better actor than Michael Jordan, but we already knew that after Trainwreck.

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