Movie Review: Space Jam: A New Legacy

Okay, where to start with this one...

(Warning: Spoilers!)

The story

Might as well start with the plot. Lebron James, a basketball player with a fantastic career, many life achievements and millions of fans, still struggles with letting his children have lives of their own. Instead of letting them do their own thing, he pushes them to become basketball players like he is. However, his younger son, Dom (portrayed by Cedric Joe), instead wants to be a video game developer, and already has dev skills that would put some professionals to shame.

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers (yes, the studio) has gigantic servers hidden far deep down under their offices, and it's home to the Serververse, a universe where all the WB properties reside on separate virtual "planets". That world is under the watch of an algorithm named Al-G (portrayed by Don Cheadle, clearly in it for the ride and having a blast no matter how silly/stupid things get), a program growing increasingly annoyed that he's not getting the recognition he feels he deserves.

Invited at WB studios with his son to discuss a new idea created by Al-G, Lebron dismisses the idea as stupid. After he gets into an argument with his son over their differing interests, both are taken by the algorithm to the server room and, then, in a machine that virtualizes them into the computer. ...What? That stuff never happens to you? Anyway, Al-G kidnaps Dom and challenges Lebron to an 18-hole in golf- nah, I'm pulling your leg, it's a basketball game. He then gives the star player 24 hours to assemble a team, then throws him to the planet of the Looney Tunes.

On there, the basketballer only finds Bugs Bunny. All of the others were offered to visit other worlds in the Serververse (read: Other WB properties) and left. Bugs is quick to offer his help to bring the band back together and, once more, play a high-stakes basketball game. Meanwhile, Al-G is cleverly manipulating Dom to turn him against his father, using the boy's affinity for game development, and has much greater - and nastier - plans in mind...

My critique

I actually got to rewatch the first Space Jam a couple weeks ago, so I have a good point of comparison. The original felt a bit lacking in the emotion department, made entirely too many jokes about product placement, and doesn't have that great of a plot per se. I also felt it did things somewhat blandly when it came to  interactions between live-action and animation (though I guess some of that can be chalked up to more limited special effect technology in 1996).

On the positive end of the scale, I feel like this film actually addresses some of these issues. We can feel the difference in how movies were written in the '90s and how they're written now. A lot of focus is put on Lebron James' relationship with his family, his son in particular, so there's at least an attempt at having a strong emotional core here. Much stronger than there was in the original Space Jam anyway, that's for sure. The base idea for the film is also stronger (reunite the Tunes to assemble a team), though the main issue there is that the plot gets messy as a result as more and more elements are added, in part due to the massive crossover element (I'll come back to that). There's also that Al-G's motivation is shallow at best, and pretty forced when you stop to think about it.

By having three main characters in live-action (Lebron, Dom and Al-G), it allows for more interactions. That said, while Lebron is in live-action for the big game and for any scenes in the real world, he spends a good chunk of his time in the Serververse in 2D, alongside the Tunes and in multiple other worlds. Actually, this is the first film in a long time to feature this much 2D animation for a significant portion of the runtime. It's refreshing.

One of the nicer details of the 'massive crossover' aspect of the film is that we see Looney Tunes blend in with the other worlds, often adapting to the look of those films (as an example, you can tell the age of the Austin Powers scene, even as Elmer and Sylvester appear in it). It also leads to unexpected team-ups. Have we ever seen Granny and Speedy Gonzales share a scene before? I don't think it ever happened before, did it? Here, they do.

However, their attempts at correcting the preceding film's critiques has led to new issues. Obviously, product placement is EVERYWHERE here due to the nature of the plot, and they couldn't help themselves making these jokes again (like showing the Nike logo in a comedic way, as an example).

We've all read about the decision to remove a scene where Pepe le Pew has consent explained to him. Guys. There was an easy fix for this. If you can't have Pepe in jokes about non-consent, just DON'T put him in jokes about non-consent. He's a toon, and he's French, you can find new jokes for him. Or is it too much work?

My biggest gripe about Lola Bunny wasn't that she was oversexualized (although that IS rather blatant in Space Jam), it's that by Looney Tunes standards, she's boring. People became loony around her due to her appearance, she pretty much was never loony herself. Animated Looney Tunes shows released since had corrected that by giving her a silly edge... which is absent, again, from Space Jam: A New Legacy. She hardly does anything that could be called loony. The one character scene she gets is a "feminist moment" where she's attempting to join the Amazons from DC Comics, but that plot detail goes out the window as soon as she rejoins the others to play basketball. She doesn't even use that training to pull moves in the climactic basketball game! Come on! Hell, once the basketball game proper starts, her dialogue is reduced to average teamwork/encouragement lines. And yeah, her... um... proportions may have been diminished a bit for the new film, but compare with the original and the difference really isn't that great. I feel like a lot of people have an exaggerated image of Lola as she was in the first film (Hell, people on Twitter thought for a while that a piece of NSFW fanart of Lola was actually a screenshot from the film!) and misremember how she looked; so the physical difference is actually not as extreme as several people claim it is.

The biggest problem, however, is the very Ready Player One-esque corporate shilling. WB is flaunting all of its properties in our faces, and it shows. It's a big ol' "here's all the stuff we have and we want to brag about it by having them all in the same film". I legit walked into the film certain that I would start this review with a clever punch like "I don't use the terms 'corporate soulless' lightly..." but overall the film tried to have enough emotional moments to counterbalance that. It does lead to a ton of mood whiplash as we visit numerous WB-owned worlds (from Harry Potter to Game of Thrones passing by The Matrix, Mad Max, Casablanca and many more), many of which feel radically different between each other. Thankfully, the part where Bugs and Lebron go through WB worlds to gather the Tunes is relatively short in the runtime of the film (15 to 20 minutes, I'd argue), with the final basketball game being much longer than that.

Unfortunately, the basketball game is also filled with characters from all of WB's properties watching from the audience, with folks like Pennywise or the Droogs (from friggin' A Clockwork Orange) right next to the Flintstones, the Scooby-Doo gang and the Animaniacs. You are pretty much never allowed to forget the fact that this film is WB showing off everything they have, like they're in a dick-measuring contest with other studios/directors who did crossovers lately. It takes away from the enjoyment when you look at it that way.

The end result isn't entirely soulless as there is an attempt at an emotional story deep down, but it's easy to forget about it. I'd give it a score around 55 to 59/100. You know... just a tiny bit below passing grade. Could've passed with just a tad more work.

Other blog updates

The anniversary review is still being written and edited. On top of that, I'm working on a special page for the blog that I hope will be ready before the end of the anniversary review. Stay updated!