It's very clear this movie is aimed at millennials: people who grew up watching, not just the original Space Jam, but also DC super-hero shows & movies, The Matrix, Harry Potter, and (more recently) Game Of Thrones. All of theses, along with various other things cameo heavily throughout the movie. They've decided to take a very different approach to the last movie, leveraging any & every WB-owned property, in a very "Ready Player One"-style. In fact, this whole movie is arguably "Ready Player One, but make it LeBron James".
Which is especially disappointing when Lebron comes across as such an unlikeable, unsympathetic character for most of the movie. According to this, when he was a kid, he has a coach who told him that he needed to focus on basketball more, and take it more seriously, and he's lived by that and nothing else ever since. He spends most of the movie ignoring the feeling and directly expressed wishes of basically everyone around him. This lead to him alienating his son, who run into the arms of the villain, and inhibiting the Tunes from doing their thing, which is exactly how they won last time. If this movie is to be believed, Lebron James is a bad father who only cares about basketball and doesn't like fun. He even explicitly says that basketball isn't fun: it's work.
Of course, the revelation of the movie comes when he decides to loosen up, but it ends up feeling so hollow. LeBron just isn't that good at being Looney. He looks stiff and goofy, trying to play along with the Tunes, most of which feel off anyway. Elmer Fudd is played more like Mr Magoo than a hunter, and Yosemite Sam seems to only be here so they can repeat that same "shoot the ball" joke from the original movie. Porky Pig also seems wrong somehow. I don't mind him spitting bars, but all the other words out of his mouth don't land right.
And yet, despite all that, I somehow enjoyed it. Maybe it's just residual joy from the original. Maybe I'm a sucker for all the references and meta-jokes. But I still sort of liked it. But the original was better.
Not like the original at all!
I am writing this as a movie fanatic and a huge childhood fan of the original.
Pros
- The style points and video game style of the Baseketball game really did compliment the looney tunes.
- Seeing Lebron James in the Looney Tunes world was really cool.
-The story of Lebron James finding his fatherhood skills in the Tunes to apply to his son was a really nice dynamic and very well executed.
-It was nice seeing another Looney Tunes movie with the Looney Tunes in it.
-Lebronne James did a great job as an actor and did the best he could with what he was given. Many may disagree with me, but I do feel he did as good of a job interacting with the artificial world and animated characters around him in a similar way that Michael Jordan did in the original.
Cons
-Did not capitalize on the magic of the original at all. The original expanded on the idea of cartoons meets real life in a similar fashion of Rodger Rabbit. This one was atrocious. The CGI "upgrade" just destroyed that magic.
-The announcers were f$#!ing terrible! Words cannot describe how awful that was.
-Don Cheadle did a great acting job with his role and did the best he could, but just like Hugh Jackman will forever be remembered as Wolverine and Bruce Campbell will forever be remembered as Ash Williams, it was really hard to see the kind, funny, light hearted War Machine (Iron Patriot?) as a computer generated villain and was just very hard to get behind.
-Having James' entire family as main and supporting characters was a bad move in my opinion. The original had Jordan's family in for a hot minute and their involvement was cheesy, but it worked. Making this entire movie about James and his family took away from the whole dynamic of a crossover between a real life celebrity and a classic animated franchise.
-The involvement of other Warner Brothers' IPs was f@#$!ng disgraceful and tacky. It felt more like product placement than anything. Tacky Sony product placement kind of tracky. Ready Player One did it so well with characters interacting with the environment and story. Having The Mask, The Peguin, Sister Act?, and the Wicked Witch being cheerleaders for the Algae character without giving them a line of dialogue or action was just disgraceful to those franchises.
-The Michael Jordan joke was inexcusable. I get the humor, but it was a tease that ruined what could have been "Disney magic". Remember when Arnold showed up in Terminator Salvation? He had no dialogue, he didn't do anything, he was mostly CGI, but his 30 second involvement in the film was very well placed and felt natural to the franchise. Having an Actor with a similar name to the original star of the franchise was just a slap in the face.
-The cameos were very lacking in this one. The first one had Bill Murray, Wayne Knight, Danny Devito (voice) and several basketball legends as themselves. Seeing Charles Barkley say "I promise I'll never sleep with Madonna again" was flipping hilarious and Bill Murray being a comedy legend playing basketball of all things just strengthened that the movie was a comedy and shouldn't be taken seriously.
In closing this movie tried to be a looney tunes movie, tried to be a basketball movie, tried to be a father and son bonding movie, and tried to be an advertisement for dozens of Warner Brothers' franchises and it was so all over the place, and it failed with all.
All in all, if you are looking for a movie to put on to keep the kids pre-occupied while you make out on the couch with the Mrs., then this is a good $1 bin Netflix grab, other than that just put the original on instead.
Review by hannahBlockedParent2021-07-28T16:50:42Z
having watched the original before this -- sequel's better, man. i don't know what the outrage over product placement is, unless product placement = all the intellectual property that wb owns? which again, capitalism. but they advertised nike about as much as the original did, and aside from something like e3 game camp being given lip service and the occasional electronics, the product placement was just acknowledgement of other wb owned franchises. and that's CUTE, not annoying. i love that they visited mad max world and lebron being a hufflepuff for a hot second was really endearing.
and is he the greatest actor? absolutely not. he's an incredible basketball player though so who cares? plus the other acting is solid, and i think both space jams highlight a big thing about acting: it's easier when you're working with other tangible people. when there's a lot of special effects to interact with, it takes a specific kind of person to make that believable. good actors aren't necessarily going to be just as good when everything is a green screen. michael jordan and lebron james both were a lot more convincing in their roles when they were interacting with other human beings -- and lebron also did better voice acting than a hell of a lot of other athletes have for video games, for that matter.
this was true feel good nostalgia for a kid who grew up with the original space jam. and it had a more cohesive story, more complete follow through on its jokes, and it was such a colorful delight to experience. if you were wowed by into the spiderverse, this gets kind of close (but obviously nowhere near) to that feeling.