Space Jam: A New Legacy Is as Clutch as J.R. Smith in the 2018 NBA Finals

Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)

Space Jam: A New Legacy is a mess, but I can’t really envision it being much better than it was. Lebron James and company do their best to recapture and modernize the magic of the mid 90s, and they fail spectacularly. The biggest problem is that Lebron James is not the near mythical force of branding and superstardom that Michael Jordan was in 1996. Sure, Lebron is an amazing player with millions of dollars of endorsements, an HBO show, an actual school, and a few championships, but MJ was the biggest celebrity in the world. On top of that, the Looney Tunes were relevant because their cartoons were still aired on TV and they were on thousands of oversized t-shirts looking tough for some reason. While people are aware of the Looney Tunes now, they are far from prevalent and were essentially DOA since the early 2000s thanks to Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

The movie also relies heavily on Warner Bros. hefty catalogue of characters, but it falls into the same trap that the Scary Movies and other parody movies encounter: a reference by itself is not a joke. Simply putting a Looney Tune in a different setting is not a joke. Just mentioning another property owned by WB is not a joke. Harkening back to a predecessor is not a joke. And even when a joke is built around a reference, it is allowed to be funny. The only jokes that were close to being funny were the slapstick jokes, which is what the Looney Tunes do best, yet this only accounted for about a quarter of the attempted humor. Also, some of the references were from way out in left field, to the point where it is impossible to determine who this movie is targeted towards. The simplicity of the plot and humor make it seem like it is targeted towards kids, but there was a Danny DeVito Penguin and a Burgess Meredith Penguin in the crowd. What 13-year-old Lebron fan is going to recognize that? Also, there were characters from very adult movies and series, like the droogs from A Clockwork Orange and the wights from Game of Thrones, displayed prominently, yet more family friendly characters like the Jetsons or the Animaniacs we buried deep in the crowd.

Even though the movie was very reliant on unoriginal references, Space Jam: A New Legacy was built around an equally unoriginal plot. In the movie, Lebron is a crappy dad and teammate because he doesn’t listen to his son and teammates. Then, at the climax, he realizes that he was crappy and gives a speech and changes to turn the tide in the game. That is it. That is the plot. I could say that there was nuance, but there wasn’t. It was a wholly unoriginal story based on an iconic, but still pretty crappy, movie from 25 years ago.

The movie isn’t unwatchable, with state-of-the-art graphics and visuals that only slip in a few instances, mostly with Don Cheadle, who was wasted in this movie. He wasn’t nearly as wasted as the supremely talented Zendaya, who had roughly 60 total words as Lola Bunny. And beyond looking pretty, there isn’t much else going for it. What did surprise me was the quality of acting from Lebron. When Lebron had to act like a crappy father who is trying to force his life onto his son and when he had to act like a whiny, overbearing teammate, he was very believable. When he acted like an unselfish teammate and nice father, he overacted. Take whatever you want from that analysis. Overall, Space Jam: A New Legacy was as bad as I anticipated, maybe slightly better. I still had a bad time. I give it 1 out of the 4 total points scored in the fourth quarter of the game. Seriously. Over 2000 points were scored in the first 36 minutes, but only 4 in the last 12.