VGFlicks: Space Jam: A New Legacy (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Completely Looney

That's really the best silly face you could make, LeBron?

Thanks to LeBron’s realization, the Tunes are now allowed to use their zany antics on the court. They have a fighting chance now! They make a grand entrance on the playing field. Third quarter, and the tone is set by The Brow getting run over by a train, courtesy of Wile E. Coyote. Elsewhere, Wet-Fire’s liquid form gets absorbed into Gossamer’s fur.

That's not "Gossamer inexplicably with a child's mind" from
the Looney Tunes Show, but I'll take it!

Side-note, I like how Gossamer recently went from just some monster in early WB cartoons to a full member of the gang. The same could almost have been said of Penelope, the poor cat that kept getting chased by Pepe Le Pew, but she was removed because of Pepe’s problematic personality. I get it, maybe the director, Malcolm D. Lee, decided it was wiser not to shake that hornet’s nest. And perhaps trying a different angle for the skunk (like showing him working on bettering himself) would have broken the rhythm of the film, who the Heck knows. Whatever.

😬Today, in "are you SUUURE you want this in your film?"

Even LeBron participates to the shenanigans – well, as much as a live-action human can, anyway. Al-G steals a microphone from Bugs during a trick and, in coaching his team, accidentally drops a rhyme – which triggers a special Hip Hop round. Uh oh. The court changes to a dancefloor with the Tunes dressed in ‘90s rap clothing. Ugh, can’t believe I’m saying that, but… we get a rap battle where Porky drops some bars to make fun of Al-G.

…

…

Good God am I glad that this gif exists. Do I even need to say anything else? This was painful. Were those extra 150 points for style worth it?

Gotta deal with that score discrepancy? Just throw
literally hundreds of balls at the hoop. That'll work.
It's so weird to see Wile E. and Road Runner work as a team.

Taz adds 225 by spinning the entire planet to make The Brow score into his  own team’s hoop. Wile E. and Road Runner add 500+ together by putting the basketball into an ACME duplication machine. Of course, the coyote’s bad luck with anything ACME leads to him getting hurt in hilarious ways. But hey, it brings the Tunes’ score to 1000, just 39 below the Goons! Al-G is losing his temper and even throwing a chair at his lackey Pete. Dom is starting to see what the AI is REALLY like. Yet, at the same time, the kid is having fun due to the Tunes’ unrestrained silliness.

I would bet a few dollars that Granny got to do so much
cool stuff because she's the favorite Tune of someone who
worked on the movie.

In a desperate move, Al-G calls Chronos to the field again. The hero team gets worried, but then Granny gets onto the court. Chronos attacks at super-speed, but Granny uses the skills she learned in the Matrix universe to freeze him in place. Then, before he can pull any nasty stunts using super-speed, she jumps over Cronos and sets his timers to age him past a hundred years old, breaking his systems and ensuring he can’t play the game anymore. As a bonus, Granny scores an extra 30 points.

Through pure teamwork, Lola and LeBron score a couple more points, taking the Tune Squad’s score to 1040, one above the Goons’ 1039.

With the style points netting the Tunes hundreds of points
per stunt, LeBron's actual contribution to their score ends
up amounting to little overall.

So Granny gets to show off the skills she learned while living in another IP, but Lola never once goes “I’m an Amazon” before opening a can of whoop-ass? And what about the one-off gag about LeBron seeing everything on a court, even what’s behind his back – couldn’t that come up for an extra gag? No? Man, just wastes of good call-backs and Chekov’s Guns right there. Hell, some characters barely get to do anything during the match; I can't remember if Speedy Gonzales does anything worthwhile! Once the Tunes start doing several hundred-point stunts, they catch up so fast that some teammates end up not getting any decent moment to shine!

Reunite And Fight

Geez, Al-G's so mad his data is showing.

Side-goal achieved: Rebuild Bridge with Dom.
Still gotta clear the main objective now.

LeBron congratulates his team, while Al-G yells at his, keeping extra ire for the young Dominic over “losing at his own game”. Ironically makes the AI sound an awful lot like LeBron did before his character development. Fourth quarter, and the first thing LeBron does is interrupt the game to have a true heart-to-heart with his son, talking aout what he has learned on this crazy journey… that he’s still learning as a father, and that he should have let Dom be himself and choose his own path in life, instead of the basketball star pushing him onto the path he has known. Father and son make up on the court.

The guy got so angry it broke his live-action filter.
Look at that, he's all CGI now.

When Al-G interrupts the sweet moment, Dom calls him out on wanting to be feared rather than loved or respected. Dom exits the Goon Squad and joins his dad and the Tunes. Good thing they had a spare jersey! In response to this betrayal, Al-G chooses to kick things up a notch and join the Goon Squad himself, transforming into a hulking basketball brute even taller than LeBron. He did show he could transform as he wanted.

The Hell? He can just do that now?

When the game resumes, the Tunes quickly score, but the algorithm reveals his final superpower, which is to rewind the game state and cancel the Tunes’ new points. To top it off, Al-G scores a two-pointer, putting his team on top again. There’s no way for LeBron’s team to fight against this! Especially at 10 seconds from the end! But Dom has a risky idea. This is Dom’s game, the one whose prototype crashed after doing his dad’s special move, right? If the “game” they’re in crashes, then Al-G, whgo is made of data, will be affected by the crash and he will be unable to cancel their points. I question the logistics; whatever, we need a final ploy to make the good guys win. But whoever makes the crash-provoking move will be deleted, like the character in the prototype. LeBron elects to do the move, assuming he’s safe since he and Dom are not made of data like everyone else.

No, Bugs! Don't take the risk! You're too Looney to
follow the rules or attempt a heroic sacrifice!

This hoop will be recorded for posterity!

When the match resumes, Bugs quickly snatches the ball meant for LeBron, does the cursed move, and tosses to the hoop. It works! The game glitches around the players! But the ball won’t make it. LeBron runs to it, with Al-G chasing after him. He gets the ball thanks to a jump power-up, but then his enemy grabs him. Thankfully, Dom tosses another jump power-up right under his dad’s feet, giving a second boost in midair that leads to him scoring a two-pointer right as the timer hits 0, ending at one point above the Goon Squad. The Looney Tunes have won! And as a bonus, LeBron scored a Posterized finale, which traps Al-G into a poster that’s then promptly destroyed by a happy Pete. I have a hunch that this payback was a long time coming.

Did he... ascend to a higher plane of existence or what?

The victory restores the Tunes to 2D, deletes the Goons, and sends all the captive humans back to the real world. LeBron and Dom stay just long enough to see their animated friends gather around a glitching Bugs. It’s only after the star player and his boy have vanished from the Serververse that the WB audience disappears, Tune World returns to 2D, and after saying a “That’s all, folks”, Bugs turns into a star and ascends. …wait, whut?

Cue to a week later. Due to its program kidnapping literally over a million people, and the several others endangered by these sudden disappearances, Warner Bros. got the pants sued off of them and will probably shut down forever, selling all their properties and having to file for bankruptcy. Not to mention the company got raked across the coals on social media. Several famous people have put their names to the suit, including Michael B. Jordan of course, and, well, let's just say, the studio is fuuuuuucked-

Ha! Just kidding. We never hear about that. What we do see is LeBron taking his son to camp that weekend. Dom thinks it’s the basketball camp, but it is soon revealed that his dad has changed his mind and is taking him to the E3 Game Camp like he wanted.

Now go, attend that E3 camp while it still exists.
I give it... two more years, max.

Cue the credits, where the Tunes are shown interacting with
celebs and discovering the real world. Oh great, now that
they're in the real world, they'll want to be paid the royalties
to their cartoons.

Dom leaves for camp, but LeBron is then accosted by… Bugs Bunny? In the real world? At the player’s incomprehension, Bugs reveals that he’s a Tune; nothing can kill him. He immediately starts making plans with LeBron to stay with the James family… only, he has brought the whole Looney gang with him to the real world. Uh oh. Bugs, I hope you locked the door to the Serververse on the way out; better make sure Agent Smith, or Pennywise, or whatever, finds your secret door, or the real world’s gonna be in trouble next. Anyway, roll credits.

Final words

If there ever is a movie I could classify as a guilty pleasure, it’s this one. I enjoy watching, but… honestly, it’s bad.

He takes the role just seriously enough to go completely
bonkers with it.

The positive (this shouldn’t take too long): Don Cheadle is having a grand time, embracing the stupidity of the plot to offer an extravagant performance. He’s great, he knows exactly how stupid this all is. The use of 2D animation for a significant chunk of the film – for a long while, this was one of the extremely rare few films released in theaters to feature 2D this much.

I like a lot the emotional core of LeBron James’ fictionalized version of himself having to learn to let his kids grow into their own paths, instead of forcing them down the one he took. Al-G’s original idea really IS bad, but I think that was by design (it did get us a short moment of self-deprecation from LeBron, at least – but still). An algorithm that only understands that certain things/people are popular, but not why, leading to mishmashes of ideas that don’t fit together.

The Goons are a cool idea, yeah. They hardly get to show
much emotion or special personality traits, since they are
almost exclusively seen during the big match.

Five more basketball players appear in the film, get CGI similes with superpowers based directly on their nicknames and basketball history, and get to voice said characters themselves – I think that’s kinda cool, personally. And finally, for all the negative I have to say about the self-promotion, some effort was put into it in places, like the segment with Lola and the Amazons emulating the look of a printed comic book, and LeBron and the Tunes being integrated in all kinds of ways to the other universes.

The negative: LeBron James’ acting is… ugh. I’m bad at judging these things, but watching the same film 10 times to write this review, I can see why the athlete won Razzie Awards over it. He doesn’t emote nearly enough; and you may think that his 2D-animated version shows a lot more facial and physical emotion, and you’d be correct, because it's animation made by people who know their stuff; but we still have his voice, his too-deadpan delivery, that doesn’t ring with enough emotion to fit with what’s on the screen.

I suspect that a lot of these scenes aren't taking out all the
stuff from the movies to recreate scenes, and instead it's
just the VFX team deleting actors and insering Tunes.

The shameless, constant self-promotion is probably what this movie will most be remembered for, whether it wants to or not. So much work has been put into that specific aspect that it overshadows the actual plot. It’s fun to see the Tunes blending into other WB properties, but that’s not exactly a saving grace when the film keeps yelling “Remember this? And this? And now, remember this other, better film or show you could be watching?” It could have been better if it was contained to its own 10 minutes, but then there’s all the characters showing up in the crowd during the match itself, really hammering this movie as a mere tool of self-advertising.

The princed comic book look of that sequence is still
Hella cool, though.

The film wastes several good characters and potential call-backs and Chekov’s Guns, from LeBron’s claimed ability to see everything on a court, even stuff happening behind his back, to Lola never getting an Amazon moment in the big game (and her being reverted to a bland character, on top of everything else). In fact, with the sheer number of style points scored by each major move in the second half, a lot of Tune Squad members don’t get their moment to shine. Maybe it’s a good thing after all that the director chose not to further bloat the cast with Pepe and Penelope.

The film just can’t settle on just one time period to overly reference; either the ‘90s (God, that rap battle bit is unforgivable), or the 2010s with all the Internet slang and memes.

Let me refer you to the "Cringe." .gif at the start of this
article.

A goddamn mess that doesn’t put its focus in the right places is the best way I could describe Space Jam: A New Legacy. If you ask me, you’re really not missing out on much if you never watch it. If you haven’t seen it, but read through all this, you got the play-by-play, you don't need to seek it out. Maybe I could suggest it to Looney Tunes fans, whichever ones haven’t seen this already – but that just won’t measure to the regular cartoons. Will I watch it again? Probably. Soon? Well, like I said, I had to watch it like 10 times to write all this, so: Most likely not!

The final film review will start this coming Friday!