Obviously spoilers for this horrible movie that I love.
Two months ago now I sat down to review Space Jam: A New Legacy. My plan was to write a thought down for every minute of the film, which has a runtime of 115 minutes. But I couldn’t do it. I got halfway through and it left me broken. But here I am now, having promised such a review, and I can’t think of something to write and I have lots of finals to do. So for your sake and mine, I have decided to put out the first half of my review. What I have written so far. And eventually I will come back and do the second half. Or maybe I’ll do it next week. Who knows. Let’s just say this movie is so thematically dense that I can’t review it all at once. So enjoy!
- Welcome to my review, everyone! What a good time this will be.
- Obligatory flashback with young LeBron choosing video games over basketball and then getting in trouble.
- There is no subtext to this movie. They lay the facts on the table so you don’t have to waste time using your brain to find deeper meaning in the actions of the characters. That way you can just focus on the purely generic spectacle that is this beautiful piece of cinema.
- Him and his mom have a secret handshake. I should rewatch The Parent Trap. That’s a good movie that has a weird intergenerational handshake in it. Not the original, I haven’t seen that. The good one, with Lindsay Lohan.
- The video game LeBron is playing is like Mario but with Bugs Bunny. I wonder if that’s a real video game.
- Oh no, he lost the game because his head wasn’t in it; his head was in video games.
- I wish this movie was about Shaq, then he could team up with The General.
- One of my former coworkers told me that because I don’t follow basketball I wouldn’t understand all the jokes about LeBron changing teams all the time. I guess I didn’t pay attention to one of the many scenes where LeBron is made fun of for changing teams? And I definitely was in the bathroom during the intro where they show a montage of archival footage of him joining and then leaving 17 different teams. I should watch more basketball so I can finally understand all of the subtle jokes this movie has to offer. Thanks, former coworker. I definitely appreciated the absolute torrent of incorrect pop culture hot takes you made me listen to.
- I’m just going to flat-out say that that was sarcasm for two reasons. He’s never going to read this, and he was always incapable of determining when I was being sarcastic or using subtext.
- Without Bill Murray or Wayne Knight, this movie suffers comedically. The first movie wasn’t great, but it had them.
- Guys, this is produced by LeBron James. What a coincidence! I wonder if he just wandered into himself on the day. He probably said “I’m producing this movie I’m also the star of?! What a coincidence!”
- Oh, LeBron says basketball isn’t meant to be fun. I can only play HORSE if I want to be a pro baller.
- LeBron has full-court vision. So I guess he’s like an owl when he’s playing basketball? OH NO, his son is pulling out a Tootsie Pop!!! An owl can’t resist that!
- You can tell LeBron is rich because he has a device that shoots basketballs. Which is also “coincidentally” a great vehicle for physical comedy if someone happens to say the word “Ball” on a basketball court. Like that would ever happen.
- LeBron really likes spaghetti.
- Oh my God it’s Cheadle time in the Warner Brothers Server-Verse.
- I assume as a piece of code he started out with some generic computery appearance and changed after he watched the Ocean’s movies and thought “It would be nice to look like that. I won’t keep the dumb British accent though.”
- Would that joke work better if I referenced Hotel Rwanda instead? Write in and let me know.
- OH MY GOD LEBRON HIT A DAB LEBRON DABBED ON HIS SON AHHHHHH. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A MOVIE OF SUCH TOPICAL AND CULTURAL RELEVANCE. OH MY GOD THERE’S POSTERS FOR AQUAMAN, JOKER, THE MATRIX 4, SCOOB!, TOM AND JERRY, AND TEEN TITANS GO TO THE MOVIES?! EVERYBODY, LOOK! BLATANT COMMERCIALISM IS THRIVING! THERE ARE MORE ADS FOR WARNER BROTHERS PROPERTIES IN THIS THEN THERE ARE REFERENCES TO BEER COMPANIES AND THE ARMY IN A MICHAEL BAY MOVIE!
- I’m 14 and a half minutes in.
- Warner Brothers made all of the classics, according to this film(?). Except Wizard of Oz, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane, Psycho, The Godfather, North By Northwest, Singin’ In The Rain, The Sound of Music, The Philadelphia Story, Rear Window, The Breakfast Club, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, The Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit, and many other movies.
- Keep in mind that of the fourteen movies I just listed, I’ve seen six(If it isn’t obvious which six, message in. I’ll tell you.), and I got every one of them off of rankings of classic movies on the internet; if I insulted you by not including The Shining, another movie I have not seen, I apologize. Sometimes jokes require research.
- Careful, Warner Brothers. You’re reminding the audience of other, better movies that exist.
- I would watch LeBron of Thrones. I tried to watch the first episode of Game of Thrones when it came out and thought to myself “This could use some LeBron.”
- Sarah Silverman and Steven Yeun or two out of a group of five performers that are only in this to remind you that good acting is a thing; we’ll cover the other three later.
- Animated screen-test LeBron looks like an XBox avatar.
- It’s such a good joke that Warner Brothers’ decisions are made by an algorithm. This movie doesn’t lend credence to that theory at all.
- OH MY GOD DON CHEADLE HAS DONNED(heh) HIS FAMOUS SHINY SILVER SUIT YAY AND NOW HE’S FIST BUMPING HIS WEIRD CGI SIDEKICK BUDDY. GUYS IT’S ALL FINALLY HAPPENING DON CHEADLE IS BEGINNING TO STEAL THE MOVIE WITH HIS OBNOXIOUS, SCENERY CHEWING, 100% COMMITTED TO IT CHARM.
- Don Cheadle is the third performer by the way. He reminds us good acting exists, not by putting in an award-worthy performance, but by being there. Sometimes the presence of an actor who is good in pretty much everything else they’ve ever been in but is clearly only in this for the money is all you really need.
- He’s also here to distract us from the fact that LeBron can’t act for shit. It’s like how they put Merryl Streep in Mamma Mia! to try and get you to ignore the fact that Pierce Brosnan can’t sing. Which is also why in the sequel where her character is dead, he doesn’t have any solos.
- Here We Go Again was the right thing to say. That movie sucks. Except for Lily James. She’s a treasure and I would die for her.
- I have reached the 17 minute mark.
- Oh, I forgot Malik is a character in this movie. He’s LeBron’s bodyguard? Agent? I don’t know. He’s kind of funny.
- Oh no, LeBron said the algorithm was busted. Now LeBron is busted.
- OH MY GOD IT’S EVEN BETTER DON CHEADLE HAS THE SILVER DENIM SUIT NOW!!!
- Bugs Bunny just referenced the first movie. Funny.
- I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now: Marvin the Martian’s blaster has a mode called Charles, Ray, and I think that’s genuinely funny. Like it’s a gun that shoots Ray Charles. Well, it doesn’t shoot him, he’s the bullet that gets shot out. Or I assume that’s the implication. They don’t show the gun at work. That’s one of two good jokes in this movie and I bet they stole it from some classic Looney Tunes stuff.
- I know that Bugs Bunny makes himself look like Big Chungus, by the way. My good friends Rahul and Sam educated me on what that freak show is before we watched the movie. I feel like people will be irritated if I don’t mention his existence in this movie chock-full of bad things.
- Also Don Jobs. Don Cheadle makes himself look like Steve Jobs. Therefore, Don Jobs.
- List of better Warner Brothers properties that we are about to encounter:
The Justice League Animated Series
Mad Max: Fury Road
Austin Powers
Casablanca
Rick and Morty
Game of Thrones
The Matrix
A Wonder Woman… comic book?
I haven’t seen most of these, mind you, but they’re definitely better than this. They need to stop reminding us that better things exist. - Also I’m pretty sure this movie is why there are some really bad episodes in Rick and Morty season 5. Space Jam: A New Legacy is creative poison.
- We’ll discuss why the subtitle makes no sense later.
- Zendaya is the fourth performer with actual talent in this
- Oh no, LeBron doesn’t like fun, guys! Basketball isn’t fun. REMEMBER HOW BASKETBALL ISN’T FUN. ALSO, YOU NEED TO REMEMBER THAT DAVID HASSELHOFF IS IN THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE, ENCHANTED IS GETTING A SEQUEL, AND IN THE DUNE UNIVERSE, FEAR IS THE MIND KILLER. ALWAYS REMEMBER THOSE FOUR THINGS.
- This movie has some truly terrible special effects. Really, really terrible. And the references are bad, the plot is generic. It all sucks. It’s a bad movie. But I enjoy it more than Ready Player One. Although I didn’t read Space Jam: A New Legacy The Junior Novelization before watching the movie. I did buy it though, and once I finally read it I’ll write a short review for this blog thing I’m doing. Or not. The point is that Ready Player One is a bad movie with bad effects based on a book that isn’t much better in retrospect, and it’s really sad that Stephen Spielberg directed it. But that’s a rant for another day.
- Oh good, more Don Cheadle! He’s helping Dom level up his character and the characters in the game. The members of the Goon Squad all have weird powers, but we’ll get to that later when I make fun of their names.
- This movie would be so much worse if it wasn’t for Don Cheadle. He’s an awesome actor. I think he’s better in this than he is in Hotel Rwanda. Is that an insult to Hotel Rwanda? Probably. That’s a sad movie. But it’s way better than this.
- I recently watched all of Community. It’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I’d rather watch the episode Paradigms of Human Memory for the seventy-third time(Best episode by far) than finish watching this for the second time.
- I’m not kidding anyone, though. This movie is terrible. Profoundly so. But I love every single second. I’m obsessed, really.
- LeBron is writing his family’s names on his shoes. If he does that in real life, I hope he writes the actual names of his real family members, and not the actors and the fake character names they gave them. I do have a theory about why they gave them different names though. I’ll mention it when it comes up.
- Bugs Bunny just danced to Can’t Touch This. Good jokes, good jokes.
- Okay, this is the biggest problem I have with this stupid movie. The Iron Giant just showed up. He was also in Ready Player One. What the idiots at Warner Brothers don’t seem to understand is that the Iron Giant, from the animated masterpiece The Iron Giant, is a pacifist. By putting one of the best characters of all time in two of your worst movies and having him stomp around and shoot people with lasers, you are showing your audience that you don’t understand or care about your characters, and you just want money. Which I understand is the edict of all movie studios, but you could at least pretend that isn’t the case, like Disney. I know that’s a particularly nerdy rant, but have you seen The Iron Giant??? It’s an amazing movie that almost makes me excuse my general dislike of Vin Diesel. Almost. They could have gotten literally anyone else to voice either the Iron Giant or Groot and it would have been just as good. God, that man is annoying.
- They just showed a montage of people getting sucked into the sidelines of the big game, which included two firefighters who got sucked in while they were gearing up. Does that mean something burned down?
- I find it hard to believe that Ernie Johnson and Lil’ Rel Howery know each other in real life. Or that Ernie Johnson has the slightest clue who Lil’ Rel is.
- I love Don Cheadle’s purple sparkly jumpsuit. Even though it’s his third-best outfit.
- I hate all the Warner Brothers on the sidelines that look like really bad cosplayers.
- We’re over an hour into this movie with about 50 minutes left to go and the basketball game has yet to start. Because we must remember that the story doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Warner Brothers owns a lot of stuff they want to show off.
- Alright, Goon Squad time everyone. We’re about to meet some of the worst-designed villains with horrible names since John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. I assume. I haven’t watched it, but I’m pretty sure he has dreads.
- Let’s meet THE GOON SQUAD:
- White Mamba – She’s a snake lady. That’s about it. The point of the Goon Squad is Dom James interrupted a charity event and scanned the bodies and basketball moves of the famous players there to have his game be more accurate. And to be fair, it is really accurate. I don’t play basketball because of all the snake ladies.
- The Brow – A giant blue bird man with a unibrow that really hates Tweety Bird.
- Wet Fire – HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Worst. Name. Ever. The man is on fire and a giant puddle at the same time. Good God. Bad design, bad idea. He’s the Space Jam: A New Legacy of characters.
- Arachnneka – Ignoring the weird spelling, the character is still dumb. She’s just a red spider monster woman.
- Chronos – Doesn’t show up until like halfway through the game. He’s golden and made of clocks and he stops time and probably the least terrible character concept? I’ll talk more about it when he gets defeated.
- I like the idea of a team of villains. I always have. I’ve been hoping for years that they’d put Zemo’s Masters of Evil into the Marvel movies. But I prefer teams of villains to not be generic or lame. I wouldn’t call the Goon Squad generic. But they are incredibly lame.
Hopefully by the second half the basketball game will have started. Look forward to the rest of this review coming soon at some point.
Too Many Servings Of John 