Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)

Starring: LeBron James, Jeff Bergman, Don Cheadle, Zendaya, Gabriel Iglesias, Sarah Silverman, Steven Yeun, Wood Harris, Rosario Dawson, Ernie Johnson, Lil Rel Howery, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard, Klay Thompson, Nneke Ogwumike, and Diana Taurasi
Grade: D+

Overloaded with cringe-inducing moments and a bloated production, Space Jam: A New Legacy pales in comparison to the original film.

Summary

In 1998, a young LeBron James is dropped off at school by his mother who tells him she can’t make his game that night because of work. He’s sad, but he understands. Before the game begins, LeBron’s friend Malik comes by and gifts him his old Game Boy because his dad got him the Game Boy Color. The young LeBron loves it, immediately turning on the Looney Tunes game in it to play. Right after, he’s interrupted by Coach C (Harris), who snatches up the video game to get him ready for the actual basketball game ready to commence. At the end of LeBron’s basketball game, Coach C calls for Bron to isolate and take the final shot. He does and misses, losing the game. After the game, Coach C tells LeBron he didn’t give it his all and blames it on him playing video games before the basketball game, saying he wasn’t focused. After telling him his basketball abilities can change his whole life if he puts the work in and avoids distractions like video games, it inspires LeBron to throw out his Game Boy.

In the present day, we see the now hugely successful adult LeBron with his family. He’s got three children: 12-year-old Dom (Cedric Joe), Darius (Ceyair J. Wright), and his daughter Xosha. As Darius shoots around in the backyard, he asks Dom how much longer it will take for him to finish creating his video game, as Dom is an aspiring video game developer. Though it’s not ready yet, it’s close. He’s more excited about going to E3 Game Design Camp to work on his skills, but he’s afraid his dad LeBron isn’t going to let him. Dom and Darius play ball against each other for a moment and after Dom jokingly misses a layup, LeBron shows up and is thoroughly unimpressed. He criticizes Dom for not taking things seriously and calls him out for playing video games on his phone. He has Dom practice his step back move, but he fails, so Bron has Darius show him. He credits Darius for putting in the work and reminds Dom he has basketball camp next weekend. A distraught Dom tries walking away, with LeBron refusing to let up on his harshness. Before anything else happens though, Kamiyah (Sonequa Martin-Green), mother and LeBron’s wife, calls in everybody for dinner. That night, Kamiyah gives LeBron shit for his roughness towards Dom and not giving him credit for creating a video game, along with how he makes everything about basketball. He tries to argue, but she makes a good point in that Dom doesn’t need a coach. He needs his father.

In Burbank, California, we head over to Warner Bros. Studios. Deep inside the studio building, we go into the well-protected and high-tech server room. Within the wiring, the Warner Bros. Serververse exists. Here, a self-aware and alive AI who runs things in the Serververse named Al-G Rhythm (Cheadle) watches videos of LeBron’s life and career. Accompanied by his virtual robot pal Pete, Rhythm talks about this new project he wants to launch and how LeBron is the perfect man for the job. The technology Warner Bros. is showing today in Bron’s meeting is technology Rhythm created. He sends a direct email to a Warner Bros. executive (Silverman) about his tech idea, and it sets everything up. Back at the James household, Dom works intensely on his game. LeBron interrupts to see how things are going, so Dom shows him an early prototype for his (almost) finished game. He shows Bron how it’s a one-on-one basketball game but instead of it being a realistic approach to the sport, there’s an emphasis on combo moves, style points, power-ups, and other arcade-style things to make the game more fun. LeBron plays it for a bit, but the game crashes unexpectedly. Dom’s character somehow got deleted, and he realizes it will take a week to rebuild it. LeBron consoles him and then invites him to his movie meeting at Warner Bros. Studios to cheer him up. The two go with a now grown-up Malik (Khris Davis) who works as LeBron’s agent, and they head over to the meeting to talk about “Warner 3000”.

A CGI version of Al-G Rhythm does the presentation about Warner 3000, and his technology will allow for a version of Bron to be scanned directly into future movie productions. LeBron is the only one in the room not impressed, insisting he can’t take time away from basketball to do things like this.

There are only two things wrong with this statement.

1. The fact this movie exists is a direct contradiction to what he said.
2. The whole point of Al-G Rhythm’s idea is that LeBron doesn’t have to be there because it’s the scanned version of him involved in the productions. The whole idea was created with Bron’s interests in mind. Technically, he can still focus everything on basketball and still make this happen if he just fucking listened to the presentation! If he did, everything that follows wouldn’t have had to happen.

To really lay it in thick, LeBron straight-up says the idea is awful and that their algorithm must be busted. Rhythm, observing this meeting through the Serververse, is pissed, especially after the two Warner Bros. executives agree with Bron and trash the algorithm to hopefully mend the fence with him. As Rhythm is about to flip out, he notices Dom giving the algorithm credit. He then talks about his own skills and the E3 Game Design Camp he’s going to. LeBron reminds him he can’t go because basketball camp is that weekend, but Dom admits this isn’t what he wants. He then leaves, with LeBron running after him. In the elevator, Dom tells LeBron he makes Dom hate basketball. He also talks about how everything seems to be about Bron (someone has been watching SportsCenter) and his interests rather than Dom’s. Dom leaves on the wrong floor, because Rhythm is messing with the technology of the elevator, so Bron runs after him. Dom sees the server room, and the previously locked door opens because of Rhythm controlling it. Dom disappears in a white flash and LeBron sees this, running towards him. The same thing happens to him too. Now, Al-G Rhythm has digitized LeBron and Dom, bringing them into the Serververse!

He greets the two. After some initial confusion and vague explanations, Dom disappears. LeBron demands Rhythm bring his son back, but Rhythm won’t unless he plays him in basketball in front of the largest captive audience ever, just so he can get the spotlight for the first time in his life. If LeBron wins, they can leave, but if he loses, he’ll be stuck in the Serververse forever. He tries to call the cops, but Rhythm rules in this universe, making his phone disappear and reappear in Rhythm’s hand. He tells LeBron he shouldn’t be wasting time and should be looking for teammates, so he has Pete send him down to the “Rejects”. Pete pulls a lever, and it sends LeBron directly to Tune World. After he crash lands, in a Nike symbol no less, he awakens as a two-dimensional cartoon version of himself. He wanders Looney Tunes World, only to find there’s no other cartoon character insight, except for Bugs Bunny. After Bugs messes with LeBron for a bit and shows him how crazy Tune World can be, they finally get down to business, with LeBron telling him about the nefarious Rhythm kidnapping his son. Bugs tells him Rhythm is the reason for all of his fellow Tunes being missing. Not too long ago, Rhythm told all of the other Tunes how awesome the rest of the Serververse was compared to Tune World and sent them on a spaceship to explore all of the random worlds within the Serververse.

Then, we see a game clock counting down nearby, showing Bron how much time he has until the game starts. LeBron needs to come up with a team to face Rhythm’s and fast.

So, he decides to help Bugs get all of his Tune friends back. At the same time, they can collect famous characters to help Bron in his basketball game. They need a ship though, so Bugs pulls out a flag and claims a random part of land for Planet Earth, forcing Marvin the Martian to show up on his spaceship and claim it for Mars. Bugs gives him the land without a fight, and him and LeBron steal the spaceship as Marvin talks. Marvin tries to shoot his anti-gravity gun at them and gets LeBron, but Bugs is able to deflect the second shot with a mirror, and it gets Marvin. Bugs grabs LeBron, and they fly out to search the Serververse to collect all of our favorite Looney Tunes. What Bugs doesn’t tell LeBron is that he intends on having his Tune buddies become LeBron’s teammates instead of people who are actually worth a shit. Once they do, it’s time to play some basketball and save Dom.

Meanwhile, Rhythm is befriending Dom and lying to him to turn him against his dad, making things that much tougher to overcome.

My Thoughts:

Once again, LeBron James continues to chase the success of the G.O.A.T. in Michael Jordan. It’s clear this shit eats at him because he tries to go at Jordan any chance he gets, from every angle. ESPN’s constant promotion of Bron from has gone straight to his head. Thankfully, this movie has proven that not only did we never need a sequel to the original classic in Space Jam, but LeBron will never be “His Airness”.

Starting off with the cringy handshake young LeBron does with his mother, the tone of this movie was set right from the beginning. The cringe is NONSTOP throughout and further exemplified when Darius stands behind LeBron to mock what he’s saying, with Bron telling him he knows what Darius is doing because he has “full court vision”. The corniness of this script knew no bounds, forcing you to groan at every possible turn, even when you’re trying desperately to give it a chance. At one point, he even dabs.

I almost turned off the movie right then and there.

You guys had six screenwriters for this film and not one person knew that dabbing hasn’t been cool since like 2016?

At one point, we even hear Granny say, “Haters gonna hate”.

I have never been close to turning off a movie twice, but Space Jam: A New Legacy was testing me like never before.

The Porky Pig rap battle didn’t help either.

There are loads of other head-scratching decisions that need to be talked about. First of all, LeBron’s wife made dinner, and its spaghetti and meatballs? This man is almost a billionaire, and you want me to believe he’s eating fucking SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS? Is this supposed to make him look relatable or something? Secondly, the opening credits, a major pro of the original Space Jam, was outrageously overproduced. LeBron is the king of highlight reel basketball plays. All they had to do was edit one together normally, and it could’ve been comparable. Sadly, they made him look like a Dragon Ball Z character after a finished play, and it was horrible. It reminds me of those NFL games Nickelodeon broadcasts on their network for kids. The soundtrack was dogshit too. Admittedly, it’s hard to match up to Space Jam‘s soundtrack because it was arguably the greatest of all time, but this sequel’s music was objectively awful, which is strange considering how LeBron apparently executive produced 2 Chainz’s Rap or Go to the League and is a known fan of hip hop in general. Next, villain Al-G Rhythm’s idea is flat-out stupid. He gets offended that LeBron doesn’t like his idea and he flips out, igniting the plot as a result. However, look at his plan realistically. His idea is to scan a version of LeBron and place him in movies Warner Bros. can produce. He even gives an example, saying they can have him face Batman and others. Now, this is ridiculous for a lot of reasons, but the main one is the simple fact that LeBron is one of the most polarizing sports figures on the planet. He doesn’t want to be hated, but he is by a lot of people.

Do you know what will further alienate people from his general personality?

Have him beat Batman!

Even though LeBron himself acknowledges that athletes acting never goes well, I’ll give his acting a pass here. Maybe I gave him too much credit for Trainwreck and expected more out of him, but LeBron’s performance was the least of this movie’s problems. It was pretty bad, but it’s not like Jordan was winning an Oscar either (though Jordan’s acting was still better for the record). LeBron was trying, but the screenplay, that should’ve been constructed in a way to mask his deficiencies as an actor, made him look worse. They put him in too many situations where he had to be a better actor to convey emotions, and it showed how bad he was because there’s only so much time for him to practice his craft. The movie was a full-length two-hour film too, and Bron had to carry it as the star, further showcasing his inexperience for everyone to see because of the extended runtime. It was long because the story was much more intricate to explain this time around, and just like the NBA today, it was overproduced, overdone, and full of fluff. You can still make a great movie if you stick to the essentials. The first one is a great example of this mindset. I understand this sequel needed to go big to differentiate itself from the original, but at some point, they needed to realize that what they were doing was just “too much”. In the first Space Jam, they made the movie shorter and pieced together a story strategically to allow Michael Jordan to act in a very basic way and still come off looking relatively well. Here, they aimed way too high.

Instead of making a sequel worth watching, they were working too hard to try and beat the original by going as big as possible and failed miserably.

The Looney Tunes stuff was still very funny. I’m always worried if the Looney Tunes will finally wear out their welcome when re-introduced to modern audiences, much like Scooby-Doo has, but the writing revolving around the Tunes was excellent. They completely recaptured the spirit of the characters while still making them funny for modern audiences. Honestly, the best parts of the movie involved the Looney Tunes doing something crazy, as it should be. The initial introduction in Tune World, the practice sequence (“Sam, shoot the ball!”), Bugs not giving a fuck and distracting Lola when she’s trying to go through this obstacle course for Wonder Woman, and Daffy as “Superduck” were all hilarious. On one hand, I’m happy they gave Daffy all the best lines, but they totally disrespected him by making him a coach. It did give him a chance to hit us with some more fantastic one-liners, but he deserved to be a player for the Tune Squad. Daffy is just under Bugs in the Looney Tunes pecking order. He should be starting.

Also, let’s be real. From a basketball perspective, you know Daffy is their best perimeter defender. It makes no sense to waste his talents as a coach, especially when we know the real LeBron would try to get him fired.

Going along with this, in what world is Tweety Bird a starter? He’s an assistant coach at best. If anything, they needed size out there. They should’ve started either Foghorn Leghorn or Gossamer at center to guard Anthony Davis’s The Brow. Though they probably would’ve looked like Vlade Divac and Scot Pollard trying to guard Shaq, switching off between the two would’ve been a better strategy than playing small with Tweety starting. With a starting lineup of LeBron, Bugs, Daffy, Lola, and Foghorn Leghorn, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have been down a few hundred points to start. Speaking of which, when you’re down this much, take a timeout Daffy! Are you even watching the fucking game?

With that being said, Daffy’s role probably gave the film its most laughs out of any of the characters. I actually laughed out loud after seeing “Trade Sylvester” on his clipboard following Sylvester bringing Michael B. Jordan into the locker room instead of Michael Jordan (a joke we see coming a mile away). To really make Daffy’s role of coach even better though, he should’ve gone full Bobby Knight. They reference it with Cheadle’s Rhythm wearing a red sweater when he’s coaching, and him subsequently throwing a chair onto the court, but Daffy should’ve been the guy to do it. Seeing classic “angry Daffy” flip out on the sidelines like Knight would’ve been hilarious. It would’ve fit him much more than Cheadle too.

One thing I will give LeBron credit for was the ability to poke fun at himself. Multiple times throughout the film, characters give him shit for leaving franchises and the argument of being the greatest is brought up. At one point, he even gets posterized. Hell, he even wants to create a super team to begin with, a joke in and of itself. I don’t know if they were trying to, but it seemed like they were alluding to Bron’s team-switching too when his own son does so in the film. You know very well Bron had the opportunity to say “no” to certain jokes about him in the movie, so I’ll give him credit for being able to make fun of his own persona and career. There’s even a point where he starts blaming everyone else on the Tune Squad at halftime.

That’s classic LeBron.

Al-G Rhythm’s existence was super convoluted and somewhat hard to understand. We get that the character was this sequel’s attempt at trying to encapsulate the digital age, but it doesn’t translate very well. I won’t harp too much on this fantastical villain though because we know this movie isn’t shooting for realism. Even then, Cheadle did his best, but he’s no Danny DeVito. The inclusion of NBA stars Damian Lillard, Anthony Davis, and Klay Thompson (and two WNBA stars a fraction of people know) to make up Rhythm’s Goon Squad were incredibly underwhelming. They all had zero personality and were nonfactors, especially when compared to Al-G Rhythm in the third act. It was yet another example of what the first film did better. Also, as good as the visuals were at times, making them these robot monstrosities with superpowers was overkill. Furthermore, I didn’t understand Lillard’s Chronos character. Once he went into his “Dame Time” effect, I don’t know how this team could believably be beaten. His character was too strong. He SLOWED DOWN TIME! If you’re trying to represent video game culture too, you have to answer to this. Is it a power up that only happens periodically? Does he always have this power? If he does, he’s unstoppable! He could’ve taken on the Tune Squad by himself and just did the same attack over and over again, correct? What’s stopping him?

Another major criticism of Space Jam: A New Legacy was the inclusion of all the different IP appearing in the film. At some points, it feels like less of a Space Jam sequel and more of a Warner Bros. commercial to show everyone what they have on HBO Max. It did add to the big game atmosphere they were trying to create, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Something wasn’t clicking. It didn’t give off the feeling that you are watching something special like how the original film managed to do with half the time and budget. In my review of the first Space Jam, I was honest in saying that it felt like Game 7 of the NBA Finals, with Jordan willing his team to victory in the most important game of his life. In this sequel, we don’t get this type of energy or the sense of urgency. It wasn’t even LeBron’s fault. It’s just the way the movie’s written. The focus of the screenplay seemed to be on how many references the film could call back to rather than the details of the story at hand.

In addition, children growing up now won’t even understand a majority of the references made.

The Rick and Morty cameo was hysterical though.

Considering the two-hour length that this sequel was given, they had all the time in the world to give us that connection audiences felt with the original, despite its flaws. This is why I consider the first Space Jam such a classic. We felt that love for the characters, its over-the-top story, its respect to the iconic Looney Tunes, and the legend of Michael Jordan. It felt (and still does feel) like a big deal. Space Jam: A New Legacy doesn’t have “it”. It’s focused on too many other things. The things that it does succeed at (the wholesome message, how having fun shouldn’t be forgotten about, the importance of being yourself, the breakdown of communication with his son and eventually understanding him, etc.) shows how less could have been more. On that note, the two-dimensional sequences were surprisingly more entertaining than the mix of CGI and live-action sequences. Having said that, the section of the movie where Bron and Bugs have to go and save all the Tunes from different worlds was fun, but it was unnecessary and felt like too much time was wasted, even with its rapid-pace presentation. The joke wore thin right after the “Superduck” sequence. You only need to show where Daffy and Lola are to get the point across. In a movie where time is of the essence, and the fact that a major criticism of this film was its running time, a sequence like this stands out as something not entirely needed.

If anything, you could’ve given each character a couple of more minutes in their different worlds and release it as a separate short film. Yosemite Sam in a three-minute Casablanca could be really funny.

If HBO Max needs content, they can have this idea for free. Just thank Cinema Loco in the credits.

Lola Bunny (Zendaya) was completely underutilized. All the news going into this movie’s release was about how they oversexualized the character in the first film and how considering the current political climate, they had made a concerted effort into making her a strong female character. However, this didn’t happen at all. In fact, she had a bigger role, was much more important, and was funnily enough, a straight-up better basketball player in the first film! She was nowhere near essential to the story in this sequel. Just associating her with Wonder Woman doesn’t make her a strong female character.

Again, you had six screenwriters for this film, and this is what you did to Lola? Pathetic.

To the surprise of no one, Space Jam: A New Legacy doesn’t hold a candle to Space Jam. Does it have positives? Yes, the Looney Tunes remind everyone they still got “it”, the heart of the movie and the message is nice, the effects are impressive, and LeBron isn’t as unbearable as he comes off in real life. With that being said, Warner Bros. did better on the marketing of the film rather than the actual narrative. They even failed on making this a basketball movie. If you talk to any hooper who grew up in the 90s, most have fond memories of how Space Jam played out. Unfortunately, this sequel seemed to be more of a video game movie rather than a basketball movie, including putting an emphasis on having fun and having style over the importance of learning fundamental basketball skills. As a superfan of the sport, this isn’t the greatest message to put out, even though this wasn’t intended maliciously.

To put things in perspective, this movie is more comparable to the much better Ready Player One rather than Space Jam (the movie it should be representing and building on). This should tell you everything you need to know about how disappointing Space Jam: A New Legacy is for fans of its predecessor.