So I walked into this knowing it’s not going to be a cinematic masterpiece but hoping it would at least be a fun, goofy popcorn movie like it’s predecessor… oh how wrong I was. Space Jam: A New Legacy is a boring, cash-grab of a film that serves as a 2 hour long advert for WB. I was honestly nearly falling asleep at the end.
The magic and heart that was in the original is nowhere to be found in this incredibly hollow movie. Despite an emotional element being attempted, with Lebron and his son’s relationship being the hinge on which the movie relies on, it falls flat and isn’t interesting or developed enough to sustain the 2 hours. Largely in part because of how Lebron is characterised in this film, he’s not a fun protagonist, he’s frequently trying to mould the other characters into seeing things how he does and maintains this motive until the last 15 minutes of the film. Overall he’s just really unlikable both on and off the court, the fact he has to carry the majority of the film himself, with really Bugs being the only one he can play off of, the film begins to drag really early on and isn’t the enjoyable, fun flick that you’d expect.
However Lebron isn’t the worst character in this movie surprisingly, Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle delivers one of the most insufferable performances I’ve seen recently. Al-G is such a boring, generic villain that is overacted in the worst possible way, he’s just a throughly unenjoyable character. Unfortunately when we cut away from Bugs and Lebron in hopes for relief we are met with scenes of Cheadle and Joe, who plays Lebron’s son Dom, dealing out pointless, nonsensical exposition that’s rough to watch. I’m glad Cheadle got a good pay check I guess.
Despite this being an overtly obvious advertisement for the WB catalogue, and that being a detriment to most of the movie, there’s a fun sequence where Lebron and Bugs journey to collect the rest of the team and run into fun situations involving other WB properties, which was a nice refreshing 5 minutes in this slog of a movie. However I think it speaks volumes that the best part of a Space Jam movie had nothing to do with Space Jam. The Michael Jordan joke was also pretty funny, I’ll give them that.
Honestly the movie just feels very empty, maybe that’s due to the fact that half of the movie is a basketball game, and an uninteresting, poorly shot one at that. There was clear attempts at themes with the video game plot line but it all felt incredibly thin and just didn’t amount to anything interesting in the end, what happens is exactly what you expect. Also the jokes, the thing you kind of expect from this sort of movie, we’re atrocious. There’s a moment in the movie where one of the commentators says the name of one of the Goon Squad called Wet-Fire and explicitly says cause he’s wet and he’s fire, that’s smart. I don’t know if this is some brainwashing tactic cause that’s not a smart name and if that gives you an indication for the quality of the writing throughout, I suggest you don’t see this movie.
★
