The Sequel.

Welcome to another movie review from Jt! Today I will be reviewing and giving my thoughts on the sequel that has been talked about for more than 25 years; Space Jam: A New Legacy. Now, I will say this in every review I type and please understand that I am not a professional reviewer, nor is my name big enough to impact people's decision to watch this movie or not. THIS IS MY OWN OPINION! Now with that out of the way; introducing first from Warner Brothers Studios, the second installment of the 1997 original, SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY!

I think to start this review off we need to go back in time. Let's go all the way back to 1997 when Warner Brothers had the idea to mix NBA legend, Michael Jordan, with Looney Tunes icon, Bugs Bunny in a movie and name it Space Jam. I should now mention that in '97 I was 4 years old so I saw this movie years later, but the movie was definitely something else. The debate on if the movie is good or not will forever be ongoing and personally I thought it was ok. You could tell early on that Jordan was trying his best but just like his baseball career, he wasn't great. Fast forward to the 2003 when the next NBA superstar entered the league and his name was LeBron James. James was and has since been in the conversation with the likes of Michael Jordan as the best basketball player in the world and since people compare the two, why not make a new Space Jam staring LeBron James! Hit fast forward once again to 2021 and poof the idea of a LeBron-led Space Jam has arrived! Now the time has come for me to tell you all my thoughts and opinions about Space Jam: A New Legacy, so buckle up and let's get started!

I always like to start with the good, so let's do that. This movie does a great job at being goofy, silly and well, looney! Adding in the iconic Looney Tunes characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Lola Bunny, Road Runner, Tweety, Porky Pig, etc was a given but even as a 28 year old man I loved it. The comedy was also good as there were stabs at real life things and witty banter from each of the characters. I think a highlight of the movie was definitely Porky Pig tapping into his rap persona and dropping a freestyle and going by Notorious P.I.G. Another highlight for me was how awesome Granny was with her Matrix style moves and being a menace on the court. Speaking of basketball, this movie was centered around LeBron playing a game against his son, Dom, for respect. Dom felt like he wasn't being able to show off his own skills, like creating a video game, and all his dad wanted was basketball, basketball, basketball. I could sense that the film was trying to grab the audience by having heartfelt family moments, but it never really hit home and we will discuss why later on. Another thing about the movie that I found funny and awesome was all, and I mean ALL, the Warner Brothers characters, movies and references. I'm talking about DC Universe, Mad Max, Austin Powers, Rick and Morty, The Matrix and much more! LeBron and Bugs go to these different places/movies in need to start up a basketball team to help LeBron and of course they find the rest of the Looney Tunes in those places. Daffy and Porky were in the DC Universe, Granny and Speedy were in The Matrix and Elmer Fudd was staring as Mini Me from Austin Powers. Just reading that sentence alone, you can tell how silly this movie was and I only named a few. I mentioned earlier that the movie hit on some real life things and what I truly meant was it had a lot of social media meme's in this movie. I will now name off the ones I laughed at: Big Chungus, every 4th wall break, calling back to the original Space Jam, the LeBron face, Notorious P.I.G., Sylvester finding Michael B. Jordan but thinking it was Michael Jordan the basketball player, and more. If you're asking what those are, just go look them up. The last thing that I enjoyed were seeing NBA and WNBA players in this movie. We got to see Damian Lillard, Diana Taurasi, Anthony Davis, Nneka Ogwumike and Klay Thompson all star as different characters from Dom's video game! Now that we've laughed and smiled at the silly moments, let's look at the bad.

I really will only talk about two things that were bad in this movie and they are the pacing and the acting. When I mention pacing in movies, what I really mean is the flow of the movie and how do scenes fit into the overall picture. There were moments where I almost fell asleep because they were really slow or really long and drawn out. These scenes hurt the overall enjoyment to me because it's like stop and go and there is no steady pace. However, that isn't the worst part of this movie; no that belongs to the acting. If you rewind to the 1997 Space Jam, the one critique that was majorly talked about was how bad Michael Jordan was at acting, well LeBron definitely didn't do any better in the sequel. I do find it funny that LeBron had a line in the movie saying that when athletes start acting, it's never good and he was spot on with that one. At times, it felt like that the actors were just reading off their script and gave zero effort into showing passion or emotion, except for one person; Don Cheadle. Cheadle plays a character that is an algorithm in the Warner Bros serververse and he goes by the name Al-G Rhythm, get it. Now Al-G is stuck in the serververse and wants the world to see how brilliant he is and therefore, kidnaps Dom and LeBron and starts the basketball game by convincing Dom that LeBron is a bad dad. Don Cheadle carries this movie because he is so good at his role and makes his character great. Take Cheadle out and it's a rough film. But, that's about it on the bad which honestly doesn't feel that bad when you read it.

Time for my overall rating and final thoughts. Space Jam: A New Legacy is a silly, goofy, lighthearted movie that shouldn't get the hate that it is receiving. I mean, it has the Looney Tunes in it for crying out loud and on top of that it has memes in it! If you go see this movie and think you will see a masterpiece, then think again. Or if you think you'll see some sort of award winning acting from LeBron James then you definitely will be disappointed. Overall, I enjoyed it and had an entertaining time. With that being said, Space Jam: A New Legacy gets a 5.5/10 for me.