SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY

Stars: LeBron James, Don Cheadle, Cedric Joe, Khris Davis, Sonequa Martin-Green and Ceyair J. Wright, Steven Yeun, Sarah Silverman and Zendaya.
Writers: Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Keenan Coogler, Terence Nance, Jesse Gordon and Celeste Ballard.
Director: Malcolm D. Lee

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

Director Malcolm D. Lee’s amped-up odyssey through Warner Bros. licensed property goldmine subs in LeBron James for Michael Jordan as the NBA superstar zapped into a ‘toon netherworld, but in every other respect Space Jam: A New Legacy is a just a fresh coat of CGI-paint on the 25 year-old concept. ‘You Do You’ is the meaningful thematic depth of the studio's literally on-brand reboot, and that will be fine for the family audience drawn to this mostly fun, often frantic romp.

In a brief prologue, tweenage LeBron gets a talking-to when his coach catches him distracted by the latest handheld tech - a Nintendo Gameboy (aaww...). From that moment on, vidgames were out, replaced by life lessons learnt through the prism of achieving basketball greatness. That proves a problem when adult LeBron’s middle-child Dom (Cedric Joe) excels at game design and is meh about basketball (though he designs a basketball game, oddly). 

A trip to Warners to hear a pitch from two execs (played by in-house HBO stars Steven Yeun and Sarah Silverman) turns incredible when LeBron and Dom are digitized and kidnapped by the evil algorithm, Al G. Rhythm (a hit-&-miss Don Cheadle) and cast into vastness that is ‘The Warner’s Serververse’. It is inside this extraordinary vision of a digital galaxy that Space Jam 2021 hits its stride; planets repping such WB profit centres as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and DC Comics are superbly-realised concepts.

In line with the ‘95 original, LeBron must collect and coach the misfit Looney Tunes team and defeat Al G. Rhythm’s bad guys in a ball game for very high stakes. Lee and his six screenwriters (!!) take a little too long getting to the big game, although there are fun moments along the way that allow for time in both ‘classic’ animation mode (beautiful to watch) and updated 3D CGI (remember when they made Homer Simpson 3D? It’s just as disappointing here).

When Jordan teamed with Bugs Bunny in 1995, the stable of Warners’ animated characters had stagnated. The project was initiated to give that rascally rabbit, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote a fiscally advantageous jolt; it was directed by ad-guy Joe Pytka, a commercials and music vid director, before and since. The studio paid big bucks for an extended Bill Murray cameo and Seinfeld’s Wayne Knight, but there are no similar comic-relief/fallback players in 2021.  

Instead, the Warners’ ‘toon ensemble enlists all their studio buddies to bolster box office potential, and herein lies the unexpected joy for film buffs. The last thing one expects to see in your Bugs Bunny cartoon are supremely silly and very funny riffs on Mad Max Fury Road, The Matrix or Casablanca, or a barrage of back catalogue faces (The Herculoids!! The freaking Herculoids!!) When gathered for the final match, the Warner Bros properties are a sight to behold; looking past the foreground action to discover another great WB character becomes second-nature. Parents will have fun on the drive home explaining the cultural significance of The Droogs from Kurick’s A Clockwork Orange.

While Space Jam: A New Legacy doesn’t come within a stuttering pig of the live-action/animation genre’s high-water mark, Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the tech is of such a standard in this day and age there is no doubt that LeBron (by far the least animated presence in the movie, in every sense) is interacting alongside his co-stars.