Space Jam: A New Legacy — Review Thread

The Space Jam McFlurry is pretty good.

Oh you'll watch this dude's videos but not mine I get it.

'Looks like there's some vanilla soft serve ice cream, lots of fudge and some chocolate ship cookie. Let's give it a try.'

'Mm, got some vanilla in there, I can taste some fudge and some chocolate chip cookie.'

Goddamn you Neverending.

I just watch it today. It’s great movie. I think it’s just fine. Definitely will watch it again.

Space Jam: A New Legacy(7/16/2021)

Space Jam: A New Legacy is not exactly a movie I had high expectations for, and were it not for the fact that it was readily available on HBO Max I almost certainly wouldn’t have seen it. That, however, proved to be a rather appropriate medium to watch the movie as the film turns out to be something of a feature length advertisement for that streaming service. The film in many ways feels like Warner Brothers doing everything in their power to sell themselves as a brand in the way that Disney so often sells itself, unlike the 1995 Michael Jordan vehicle this is based on in which Jordan was simply sent to “Tune World” this film sees Lebron James uploaded into a computer world based around the entirety of Warner Brothers’ intellectual property. We see “DC World,” fly past “Harry Potter World,” “Matrix World” and in some particularly undignified moments we see the cartoon characters inserted into scenes from The Matrix, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Casablanca and when the film’s central basketball game starts they’re being spectated by damn near every character from Warner Brothers history including but not limited to: Pennywise from It, the Batman and Robin version of Mr. Freeze, and of all things the Droogs from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. It’s all very Ready Player One, which has proven to be oddly influential on the films of 2021 but at least that movie had the dignity to stamp the Warner Brothers logo all over all its IP pilfering. Of course commercialization is to be expected from a damn Space Jam sequel, the original movie was basically a feature length version of a series of Nike commercials after all, still there is something rather obscene about watching a major corporate media company suck its own dick for two hours.

Having said all that… if you want to watch an insidious act of synergy gone wrong this one isn’t poorly made. At the very least I think it has a lot more going for it than that old movie. Lebron James is probably a better screen presence than Jordan was (not that I’d particularly want to see him play anyone other than himself) and Don Cheadle is plainly have a lot of fun as the film’s villain. The film’s technical aspects will also hold up a lot better than the original films and I thought the CGI version of the “tunes” looked a lot better than they needed to. I doubt the film will impress Looney Tunes purists I do think the film showcases those characters better than the first film did and the film’s six writers find some moments of comedy I was amused by (along with other moments that are plainly cringe). And while I can rag on the film for its shameless showing off of Warners IP I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get some fun out of playing Easter Egg Where’s Waldo with some of the characters in that crowd. Does any of this make up for the fact that this whole project is basically the world’s most expensive company picnic video? Well, my mind says “no” but my heart says “maybe.” Again, whatever enjoyment I got out of this thing were because of subterranean expectations but those low expectations were exceeded by quite a bit more than I expected.
**1/2 out of Five

Plus it’s a genuine sports movie with stakes that plays off the iconography of Michael Jordan.

I'm amazed so many of you guys watched this movie. I would expect it from godzilla because he's like the Mick Foley of these boards throwing himself through flaming tables just because they're there but the rest of you surprised me.

It's free and can be streamed while working from home.