Space Jam: A New Legacy

🍿

🎙️ EPISODE 458: 05.03.22 This isn't a movie. I was going to give it the vaunted and very rare score of ZERO but my daughter actually liked it a tiny bit. I don't think — THANK GOD — she'll be going back to it, but she didn't hate it. And as I've stated a million times when it comes to this kid content shit, it ain't about me. That being said, this isn't a movie. It's an ad for Warner Brothers intellectual property. Why does there need to be a 115 minute long (!!!) 'advertisement' for such a thing? Yeah well that seems to be the only question here, doesn't it. I can't even venture a guess. In some perverted way, I suppose I was 'having fun' trying to pick out characters I recognized in the background of the final game sequence, which feels like it lasts half the running time or a million years. At one point, I was convinced I saw the old lady bad guy from Goonies. (But who cares enough to look??? Not fucking me that's who)

These 'cameos' — by the way — are just lookalikes doing cosplay. I thought they would be CGI deepfakes at least, but no. It's just actors doing a creepy impersonating gig. No different than the Times Square Elmos, only they'll live on HBO Max for the rest of time.

It's not normally my bag to enter 'Holier than Thou' Mode™, but every single person involved in the creation of this should feel bad, if not fully ashamed. The impossibly weird nature of this being a commercial for a giant studio's content library aside, the movie is an incoherent mess. None of the Looney Tunes gags are funny, let alone have a shred of wit. LeBron can't really act (this wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but it sort of compounds things when all the other elements are so bad). And I fucking hope Don Cheadle got paid at least 10x his going rate.

In closing, I have made the podcast for this review one long farting noise. And I should've stopped there.

PS. In terms of how this relates to the original, if anyone cares: it doesn't reference the Jordan one at all aside from the only goof which sort of worked a tiny bit (Daffy Duck goes looking for M.J. to aide the Tune Squad but returns with Michael **B.** Jordan, the actor, instead). I recall enjoying the first film AS A KID, who also happened to love basketball. I was fourteen, so maybe a tad old for the demographic already. My memory of it is that it seemed quaint and vaguely endearing, given the fairly bonkers setup and overall concept of the project. I don't think I'll ever watch it again though, so who knows. Maybe it was just as soul-crushing but in a different way.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 457 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 459 ⫸

---

Space Jam: A New Legacy (also known as Space Jam 2) is a 2021 American live-action/animated sports comedy film produced by Warner Animation Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film is directed by Malcolm D. Lee from a screenplay by Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Keenan Coogler, Terence Nance, Jesse Gordon and Celeste Ballard. It serves as a standalone sequel to Space Jam (1996) and is the first theatrically released film to feature the Looney Tunes characters since Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). The film stars basketball player LeBron James as a fictional version of himself; Don Cheadle, Khris Davis, Sonequa Martin-Green, and Cedric Joe star in live-action roles, while Jeff Bergman, Eric Bauza, and Zendaya headline the Looney Tunes voice cast. The film follows James enlisting the Looney Tunes' aid to win a basketball game in a Warner Bros.-themed virtual multiverse against a rogue artificial intelligence's avatars after James's son is abducted by the AI. It was released on July 12, 2021.