(Warning! Spoilers!)
Let’s get the important thing out of the way: I have watched Space Jam: A New Legacy three times and have not been able to spot a single character from Tiny Toon Adventures.
Tiny Toons is even getting a reboot soon on HBO Max and there wasn’t a Babs or Gogo Dodo anywhere.
This seeming non-sequitur introduction is surprisingly appropriate for the movie. It has everything for everyone yet the movie doesn’t know who its audience is meant to be. This is coming from a big fan of the original Space Jam.
Instead of Michael Jordan being drawn to the Looney Tunes universe via a golf hole, we get LeBron James’ son being kidnapped by Al G. Rhythm, a rogue algorithm (played by Don Cheadle) who wants to rule everything or something. Originally, Al G. Rhythm wanted LeBron James to be the star of Warner Bros via the magic of CGI, but when James balks at the idea, Al goes super evil. Was he already evil and just pretending in the beginning? I really couldn’t tell you.
LeBron and his son have a rocky relationship. LeBron is the stereotypical “gotta follow my pro basketball dreams, not your own” family movie fodder father. His son Dom enjoys basketball, but just for fun, and would rather be designing video games. Al uses this to drive a wedge between LeBron and Dom after kidnapping him into the Warner Bros. Serververse where all of the Warner Bros films and worlds are stored.
LeBron gets sent to Tune World after confronting Al and meets up with Bugs Bunny, who agrees to help him save his kid, but first, they have to reunite the Tunes to form a basketball team.
Oh yeah, there’s a basketball game looming against Al’s team and if LeBron wins, he gets his kid back.
I feel like this synopsis is taking up far too much time, and the trailers have given most of the plot away, and it isn’t like it is something super complex. LeBron has to play basketball to win his son back and save the Tunes and the world from Don Cheadle. Spoiler: He plays and wins the game, learning to appreciate his son’s unique interests and support him on his level, all while discovering basketball can be fun.
Many detractors of Space Jam: A New Legacy have said it is a commercial for Warner Bros, and they are right. The trailers made the film make it out to be a 115-minute cameo-fest, akin to Ready Player One. The first 30 or so minutes of the film drags with setup and exposition showing the family tension and no real comedy. This section reminds me greatly of the 60s through early 80s live-action Disney movies, kind of boring and not something that would grab kids right away. (Think The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or The Shaggy D.A)
The movie picks up once we meet Bugs in Tune World and go on a too-short adventure to find the rest of the Tunes and form a team. This is where the movie is great and confusing at the same time.
Space Jam: A New Legacy is ostensibly for kids in the 7-12 range, and there are clear nods for the older millennial parents out there, but I have to say, I did not expect a Mad Max Fury Road segment, Austin Powers, or the actual Rick And Morty to show up. I genuinely dropped my jaw because it was so out of left field. It was entertaining to see the Tunes interact with the Justice League animated characters and a great sequence with Lola Bunny in Themyscira (yes I had to google the name of Wonder Woman’s home.)
We even go get Yosemite Sam at Rick’s Café Américain from Casablanca. I want to say something funny here, but I was confused. Kids aren’t going to get even half of these references. Why are they spending all this with movies that the parents will know but the kids won’t? Nor will they care. Do people really get excited by a Casablanca reference these days?
There were genuine laughs here, but then it drags down a bit when we go back to the Dom/Al surrogate father storyline. The movie keeps hammering us over the head with a cartoon mallet that Dom is being tempted to cut corners and not work hard like his dad wants him to.
With about 50 minutes left in the film, we get to the big game and everyone is here. I love this part. I loved it in the trailers. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Warner Brothers-owned characters show up to watch the game, including the Gremlins. Granted, it bugged me a tiny bit because they were running around in broad daylight but hey, we got some pretty decent CGI Gremlins including Stripe with his chainsaw. That made the almost 2 hours worth it.
The amount of characters WB owns is simply astounding. I talked about my excitement for this sequence in a previous article, and I plan on rewatching these scenes a few more times to see all the other deep cuts that show up for the game.
Courtside, you have extras dressed as discount Jokers, The Mask, Agent Smith from The Matrix, more Batman characters, Droogs from A Clockwork Orange, and other kid-friendly properties like Game Of Thrones front and center. They felt so out of place, never really reacting properly to the action around them. Watching these rent-a-characters that looked like they were stolen from a suburban kid’s birthday party appearance was quite distracting.
This also is where things start to fall apart. You see this is not any ordinary game. This is along the lines of crazyball from Psycho Goreman. The rules are so abstract, I had no idea what was going on. I discussed this with a friend of mine before writing this review, and he was also turned off by the abstract of it all. He couldn’t get invested in the game since there was no rhyme or reason to the points scored or the rules. The more I think about it, he’s right. It would have been a better climax if the game made some kind of sense.
There’s a ref…but why? 66 points because of style? I think at one point there’s a 1000 point basket. Yes I get the fact it’s based on this NBA-Jam arcadey basketball game that LeBron’s son Dom designed, but even then you expect David Hasselhoff to show up and wink at the camera and score 520 more points for the Tunes. That would make about as much sense as the game does.
LeBron has to “get looney” to win the game when all seems lost, and then we are back to a good movie. This was fun. In fact, any scene with Wile E. Coyote was pitch-perfect. Gossamer (the big red furry Looney Tunes monster with high-tops) also was a gem.
The Tunes win the game, LeBron makes amends with his son, and Bugs Bunny dies.
Another friend of mine watched the film with his 7-year old daughter. She loves most cartoons and enjoys this kind of thing. She was bored until the game and was extremely distraught when she thought the Tunes would lose. This upset her to the point of nearly turning it off. Bugs Bunny dying on the court? Nothing. Didn’t care… and she loves Bugs Bunny.
I felt the same way about Bugs dying. Like, this wasn’t your typical “You Got Me Doc” overly dramatic moment dying in Elmer Fudd’s arms like in the classic cartoons. This was a pretty serious death scene.
Of course, in the span of a dissolve and fast forward to the epilogue, Bugs pops up in the real world because he is a cartoon and is now going to crash at LeBron’s place. The end. Seriously. Who was this movie for? Did we need a sacrificial Bugs Bunny?
Overall, the movie was mostly fun. It was a fine popcorn flick and that’s ok. It didn’t have the charm or pacing of the first film and felt very uneven.
I think LeBron was a capable actor, but I wouldn’t pay to see him in anything. Nor does this feel like a vehicle to make him a movie star. He is clearly playing a basketball player not an actor in the movie. He has more personality and better delivery than Jordan did in the original, but no one can match the level of the legend and natural charisma that Michael Jordan had that carried him through the 90s.
I had a good time, and it was a fine film. It isn’t going to stick with many people (especially considering the music is nowhere near as catchy or pumping as the original’s), but kids will probably dig it before returning to Fortnite.
That’s really my recommendation, right there. Do your kids dig Fortnite? Then Space Jam: A New Legacy is fine. Otherwise, prepare to explain who Rick And Morty are to a 7-year-old… then watch their Youtube history closely.
