"A New Legacy" is one of those subtitles that sounds like it means something but doesn't, only in this case it kind of does. The first Space Jam was not exactly celebrated on arrival (the mid-90s was a time when the classic Looney Tunes shorts were still the basis of most people's memory of the characters), but over the years its legacy - such as it is - has grown. Basically, the idea here is that even if the kids come out of this thinking "meh", hopefully in a decade or two they'll be forcing it on their kids and the cycle of profit can continue.
If that makes this sound like a soulless business decision, welcome to Hollywood. Fortunately the film itself is just slightly better than the bare minimum requirement for a cross-promotional exercise, thanks in large part to the surprising amount of charm LeBron James brings to the role of LeBron James. The story isn't quite the same as the original - here James and his video-game loving son Dom (Cedric Joe) are sucked into the Warner Brothers "server-verse", home of all their IP and ruled over by one Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle), who is annoyed that James wasn't interested in fronting his latest hacky marketing push.
For some reason this results in a basketball game, and Al seems to think he's dealing James a bum hand by saddling him with the Looney Tunes characters despite this film existing in the same universe as the first film. While Bugs Bunny has stayed on his home... planet?, the rest of the Tunes characters are scattered across the rest of Warner's iconic IP and have to be gathered up. If you've ever wanted to see the Road Runner and Wil.E Coyote in a Mad Max movie, good news (also, seek medical help).
James himself does an excellent job of holding all this together, even while stuck with a "you kids have to follow the same hardass path to success as I did" subplot (his son wants to be a gamer - a divide Al is more than happy to exploit). This never resorts to poking open fun at James - you wouldn't be watching if you weren't a fan on some level - but it does mix in just enough James-adjacent jokes to make him seem like a decent guy who doesn't take himself super-seriously, and it doesn't hurt that he's animated for a lengthy stretch.
On the other hand, the Looney Tunes characters are poorly served. Bugs is a shadow of his former wiseguy self, while Daffy barely gets to bluster at all. Porky Pig's rap battle as "Notorious P.I.G." is exactly the kind of terrible dad joke this movie seems to require; what it has to do with what remains of his character remains to be seen. Even Lola Bunny is basically superfluous after an introduction where she battles to join Wonder Woman's Amazons. It's hard to think any kid is going to be motivated to seek out the original shorts after this.
And yet, this remains largely entertaining thanks to a fast moving plot, a decent dynamic between father and son, Cheadle clearly having a lot of fun, and a final basketball game that, for some reason, has all of Warners most cartoony bad guys in the audience whether they're kid-friendly or not. Yes, that is Pennywise the child-eating clown and the rapist Droogs from A Clockwork Orange jumping around next to the Schwarzenegger-era Mister Freeze, Agent Smith from The Matrix and The Mask.
There's also a bunch of Game of Thrones references early on, opening the door to HBO's collection of classic kid-friendly characters. What, no Tony Soprano? Where's Al Swearengen from Deadwood? Seriously, once you realise this movie could have had a cameo from Larry David it's hard to settle for what we got. The Looney Tunes characters now exist in the same cinematic universe as Sex and the City; cameos from The Iron Giant and King Kong just aren't going to cut it any more.
- Anthony Morris
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