After the 1996 family film Space Jam teamed up basketball legend Michael Jordan and Looney Tunes icons together for a game of hoops, many have tried and failed to deliver a worthwhile follow up to that film. Aborted sequels were trotted around over the decades and other integrations of classic animated characters and live action were less than stellar.
But this is 2021, and now we have Space Jam: A New Legacy. Trading Jordan for LeBron James, adding Don Cheadle as a new villain and updating the Tunes in 3D animation, this long awaited sequel finally gives fans what they want: A self congratulatory crossover with hundreds of licensed characters from Warner Bros, plus lots of CGI bad guys and- wait, what?
In this version, LeBron and his son Dom (Cedric Joe) are sucked into the “Serververse,” a callback and nostalgia utopia filled with all of WB’s famous franchises. Cheadle is Al G. Rhythm (Yeah…), the ruler of the land, who wants to use LeBron’s legions of social media followers to get the recognition he feels he deserves by challenging LeBron to a basketball game with the threat that he will condemn him, Dom and every one of his followers to cyberspace if he loses.
Naturally, LeBron is forced to team up with Bugs Bunny, who’s been separated from his gang of iconic cartoons, and the Tune Squad must reunite to save Dom, who’s been corrupted by Al’s deceptions that LeBron doesn’t care about him.
Rest assured, there is a story in this sequel, arguably much more so than the first film. LeBron and Dom’s father/son struggle is a compelling, if mostly predictable, tale and Bugs surprisingly gets a great arc as he tries to get the band back together. Problem is, WB stuffs the film with so much nostalgia overload that all else falls to the wayside. Many a comparison has been made to Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” also a WB film, and they’re not wrong. The extravaganza of copyrighted characters that appear here rivals Ernest Cline’s cyber scape and many of the references made here will likely go over younger viewer’s heads- Have you ever wanted to see Foghorn Leghorn in “Game of Thrones?” Too bad, you get it here.
And there’s nothing wrong with an overabundance of references, depending on how they’re used. Thing is, since WB owns all of these characters and even allows the film to take place on the WB backlot, it feels less like a complete and fulfilling story and more of a commercial for the studio making the movie you’re watching. Even the infamous scene in the first film where Wayne Knight lists every one of Michael Jordan’s sponsors in one sentence feels less intrusive than this film.
It’s not all obstructive, though. Where the film shines is LeBron’s interactions with the Tunes, which are much more developed than Jordan’s, and some admittedly creative twists on basketball in a computer generated world. The climactic game is actually a thrilling game with lots of ups and downs and there is a touching finale that might actually tug at the heartstrings.
Space Jam: A New Legacy is the first real disappointment of summer 2021, albeit one that wasn’t entirely misguided. The departure from what the original film was trying to be, is certainly a modern twist on Space Jam, for better or worse, but not every gamble pays off.
Space Jam: A New Legacy is now playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.