Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Duration: 115 minutes
Space Jam: A New Legacy (VOD) – Movie Review
Back in July, we reviewed the 4K UHD edition of the 1996 version of Space Jam. We concluded that the movie had withstood the test of time quite well and is still a very enjoyable experience. The movie gets to the point quickly, and is just classic Looney Tunes fun, while keeping the story believable and accessible for all age groups. We were baffled when a new Space Jam movie was announced, and when watching the early trailers, we were already quite appalled with what they had done with the classic source material. Nonetheless, we dived in without any prejudice, only to find an experience far worse than we initially imagined.
Space Jam: A New Legacy takes us on a new journey where an NBA player must play a wacky match of basketball in order to save himself, his family, and the Looney Tunes. We get to meet LeBron James’ family and his strict way of teaching his children discipline. Just like him, he wants his sons to become successful basketball players. However, his youngest son, Dom (Cedric Joe), is more interested in making his own videogame, and he is actually quite good at it too. Sadly, he doesn’t really get noticed by his father, and LeBron still wants Dom to keep pursuing basketball. When LeBron takes Dom with him to a business meeting with Warner Bros, things turn a bit bizarre as they soon find themselves sucked into the Serververse, a digital world that stores all the worlds of the different Warner Bros franchises. The AI in charge of this universe, Al G Rhythm (Don Cheadle), wants to be recognized as the best and smartest entity in the world, and he’ll need Dom to achieve this goal. It doesn’t take long before LeBron has to play a basketball game against his son with only the Looney Tunes backing him up. Sadly, it won’t be a regular game of basketball, but one according to the rules of Dom’s game where regular basketball rules mean nothing.
The flow of A New Legacy is absolutely offputting. The movie struggles to find its pace, and it’s simply more than half an hour too long. You’ll go from one unlikeable character to another, only for Warner Bros to add a lot of product placements in-between, including a lot of so-called cameos for other IPs they own. It feels like a competition from start to finish to cram in as many references as possible to other movies and shows, rather than to focus on the actual plot of the film. Not only does this make the experience very unlikable, it just becomes unwatchable. The plot itself feels shallow, the characters are underdeveloped, and most story choices just feel like missed opportunities. We were then even more appalled to see characters such as Pennywise from IT or Jeanne des Anges from The Devils creeping in the background of a children’s movie. Keep in mind, The Devils is actually a movie that got banned for many years because of its content. There was no rhyme or reason as to how this movie was put together, and we regret that the wholesome experience of the original is now forever blemished because this new film also carries the Space Jam name.
As far as acting performances go things aren’t really well handled. We realize Michael Jordan wasn’t a decent actor either, but as far as this production goes, WB is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel. LeBron might actually show us a worse acting performance than the ones we find in the recently uncovered Russian Lord of The Rings bootleg production. Don Cheadle is also taking a massive step back after appearing in the MCU, to now resort to playing such a poorly fleshed-out character. Even the Looney Tunes feel off for the most part, with only a few of them sounding a bit familiar or authentic. As a whole, it’s clear that WB just wanted to advertise their different IPs with the usage of constant cameos, rather than actually have a good story or cast supporting the production.
In terms of extras for a physical edition, it would be quite nice to see how the animations were handled for this one. We have to give credit where credit is due, the animations, for the most part, were nicely handled. The quality of most digital figures was spot-on, except for the Goon Squad and Lola Bunny, who just looked off. Some of the background extras, which were handled by actual people in costumes, looked absolutely horrible.
Conclusion
Space Jam: A New Legacy is one of those movies that should have never been made. The entire experience felt like a huge advertisement for Warner Bros, with actual product placements for Nike and other brands thrown in the mix as well. We still don’t understand how a wholesome nineties movie got rebooted into this abomination where all morals seemingly go out of the window. It’s also hard to grasp why a movie that has a PG rating would include characters from horror films or other very violent series and movies. If given the choice between this new iteration of Space Jam or a box of laxatives, we suggest the latter.
Space Jam: A New Legacy (VOD) - Movie Review,
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