'Space Jam: A New Legacy' movie review: Sucking the fun out of Looney Tunes

Director: Malcom D Lee

Cast: LeBron James, Don Cheadle

Score: 1.5 stars

Have you heard of the curse of the threequel? Well, Space Jam: A New Legacy is that, but just as a sequel.

It shouldn't be possible for a film that follows up on Space Jam, one of the best Looney Tunes movies ever made alongside Who Framed Roger Rabbit to be bad enough to remove any sense of fun from watching Looney Tunes, but somehow, in its one hour 55-minute runtime, it manages to do it.

The movie itself seems like it fails to understand what made Space Jam so good, which was its borderline self-awareness mixed with a genuinely fun presentation of the game. A New Legacy, on the other hand, is more of an extended Warner Bros. product placement advertisement disguised as a movie.

Sure, the studio has become significantly bigger from 1996, but it didn't need to pull a weird, in-your-face marketing stunt back when the original film came out. There, everything stood on its own strength and the strength of cartoon physics. The story may have been weird, but that's just classic Looney Tunes, but mixed with a story that bordered on the edge of being actually good, with some amazing acting by the Tunes and Michael Jordan, the original was an authentically fun escape.

This film, on the other hand, is not. It's bloated, it misses the mark on what made Space Jam tick by a mile, and induces a severe case of cringe more often than not.

One of the key mistakes A New Legacy makes is that it lacks the simplicity of the first film. It over-complicates itself with a needless attempt of plugging in other WB properties like The Matrix and Justice League, which comes largely at the expense of the Looney Tunes, who should be the stars of the film.

Another mistake it makes is making the film too much about LeBron. Where in the original film, Jordan was more of a supporting character to the Tunes, A New Legacy puts LeBron front and centre, embarrassingly so. LeBron being a star lacks an anchor other than "oh hey it's LeBron James, the great basketball player". There is the core plot about him wanting to make his son a great basketball player, while his son just wants to make a game, but that's moot given that it's not used to much effect other than advancing the film.

But the most egregious fault of the film lies in its own self, even if you look past the fact that it is a sequel. It's unfunny in that the comedy, if there is any, falls flat on its face and relies too heavily on just using popular catchphrases at face value. It also takes too much of product placement and a heavily exaggerated AI villain in Al-G Rhythm, who is honestly the most low-effort villainous AI to ever be created by Hollywood.

The plot is also tedious and boring, lacking any sense of originality. It tries too hard to have self-aware humour and be serious at the same time, falling into a deep pit between Space Jam and Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of quality of presentation, story and the fun factor.

It's a misnomer to call Space Jam: A New Legacy a basketball movie, it's a misnomer to call it a (good) Looney Tunes movie, and it's a misnomer to call it anything but a terrible attempt at a sequel.