Space Jam: A New Legacy
WARNER BROS/HBO MAXAs far as big-budget soulless blockbusters that nobody asked for go, Space Jam: A New Legacy could have been a lot worse. It is half an hour too long, does not have anything interesting to say, and is not even all that funny, but it is a fun movie with some truly stylish animation that give audiences everywhere a craving for Loony Tunes.
For a movie about Lebron James playing basketball inside a computer with Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Warner Bros. media empire, A New Legacy sure does take its convoluted time getting to that premise. Audiences will watch the movie regardless, so it is hard to imagine that half an hour is needed to explain how James got himself stuck inside a computer with Don Cheadle and to set up the relatively simple emotional storyline with his son. This whole section of the movie bores to tears, and it is not until the Tunes show up and the animation takes over that the film becomes somewhat enjoyable.
In the meantime, James’ lack of acting chops are on full display, and no, making a joke about basketball stars not being able to act does not excuse poor acting. The four screenwriters – the first red flag – of the film are apparently under the delusion that self-awareness and meta merely involve pointing out the dumb parts of their film but doing them regardless.
The film also has an extraordinary identity crisis. The villain is Al G. Rhythm, an algorithm played by Don Cheadle created by Warner Bros. executives and winds up trying to trap millions of people inside a computer. The same Warner Bros. executives also try to sell James on their greed-based idea of having the basketball star show up in all their movies. So corporate greed and formulaic cash grabs are supposed to be villainous, but that is precisely what the real-life Warner Bros. executives who green-lit this movie did. It is a little bit confusing.
Nevertheless, what there is no doubt about is the bluntness of the movie’s commercialisation. It is not a stretch to say that A New Legacy is nothing more than a giant commercial for all of Warner Bros.’ other properties, especially when the original Space Jam was based on a commercial itself. It makes the nostalgia-based appeal of Ready Player One look like an auteur-driven endeavour. Not only does James wind up visiting nearly all of Warner Bros.’ major properties within the computer, but at one point, every single character from nearly all of the studios’ major movies comes together in one place to watch a basketball game. They stand on the sidelines, cheering the entire time, and it is more distracting than anything else.
Worse still, the film is not funny. Besides the cleverly animated sequences on Tune Land that feature hijinks ripped straight from Loony Tunes and a Porky Pig rap battle, there are not many jokes. The writers could have tried to add in a few more here and there, but all they rely on are the dopamine hits they hope audiences will get from recognising Westeros or Harry Potter or Pennywise the Clown. They forgot to include anything original.
Director Malcolm D. Lee does not do much to ground the movie emotionally, either. At least he keeps everything relatively light throughout, and indeed, the movie is rarely boring – minus the first half hour – but any emotional stakes the film goes for do not land. It is painfully apparent whenever Lee slows the movie down to zoom in on the relationship between James and his son, and it winds up feeling shoehorned in. It is such a simple conflict with the most obvious solution: it is hard to care about it. Sometimes simple can work, but not when the emotional beats are as on-the-nose as they are here.
Despite incredible advances in the animation department since the first film, Space Jam: A New Legacy is even more of a shameless exercise in corporatisation than its predecessor. It is hard to ever see past the giant dollar signs permeating every frame of this ill-conceived movie.
