It’s been a full year since I last did a rage review. Am I becoming a calmer and more rational person? No, I’m just very busy and don’t have the time to invest in longer reviews, especially since I’m instead doing longer series retrospectives as well. Hence the more erratic schedule of late for which I apologise. That and I choose to reserve my anger for media that really deserves it.
Yes, you will do nicely.
In spite of the fact that Disney owns… almost everything
under the sun they’ve shown some restraint when it comes to self-indulgent crossovers.
Not to say they’re non-existent, there’s a whole Simpson’s Marvel Crossover and
the Ducktales Reboot has references to all the Disney afternoon cartoons, oh
and there’s some minor references in Free Guy, but nothing quite at the same
spectacle as having say a whole bunch of their properties show up in Lego form. [Editors note: This was written before the Chip and Dale movie came out]
When it comes to self-indulgent crossovers, Warner Brothers
is King. The Lego Movie and its sequel are prime examples of the kind of thing
I’m talking about, it’s not surprising they were the ones who did the
adaptation of Ready: Player One. A story built on the premise of a
self-indulgent crossover. But of all the self-indulgent crossovers, none are as
big or as self-indulgent as… wait, Space Jam 2?
There have been attempts to get a sequel to Space Jam off
the ground since the first one’s success. It was announced in the 2010s that a
new basketball super-star LeBron James would be the basketballer in the film.
But what really kicked off production for the film was the launch of the
streaming service HBOMax. A Streaming service that holds most of the Warner
Brothers films.
The original Space Jam was a feature length version of a
shoe commercial, so the idea was formed to make a feature length HBOMax
commercial for its sequel. Or at least that’s how I envision it was conceived.
I can’t imagine it was because they thought they could make an entertaining
movie from this idea.
So how bad is this film? Well, let’s take a look.
We open with a scene early on in LeBron James’ life, a
friend of his gives him a Looney Tunes game on a Gameboy, and he ends up
distracted by it… Yeah, I wouldn’t have it courtside whilst you’re playing a
match either. Coach reprimands him for it after, when he finally gets on pitch, he misses a crucial shot and the team loses the game. He’s told that to realise
his potential on the court he needs to filter out all distractions. A hard ask for a child.
We then get the opening credits to give us an introduction
to who LeBron is as a Basketballer, the problem is without the great music from
the original and with there being audio clips over from LeBron’s achievements [which
are at least in HD so don’t look like shit] it feels less like an introduction
and more of an ego-trip, something we’ll see more than once.
We cut to LeBron’s two sons; Darius and Dominic. Whilst both
have some basketball skills, Dom at least sees it more as a means to have fun
and unwind as opposed to a necessary step on his career path, his passion
appears to be more geared towards the design of video games, with a project he
wants to take to EA Camp, the camp that teaches you how to be among the
absolute worst (and I'm not talking about game design).
But LeBron seems to be under the impression that Basketball
is everything and can’t seem to conceive of the notion that his sons might not
want to play basketball professionally. We don’t see enough of Darius to gauge
his thoughts on the matter but it’s fairly obvious to me Dominic does not want
to be one. And it’s not like he sees Dom’s chance of success at Video Game
design to be one-in-a-million, [though whilst I’m sure family helps, his
chances at being a successful basketball player are much lower] he just can’t
conceive of the idea and that is really dumb. I don’t doubt that growing up
with a Basketball superstar is not always ideal, but this isn’t why.
Dominic is still working on the design of the game, which is
a stylised version of basketball that uses video game metrics to make it more
unpredictable. There are power-ups, special moves etc. Still, him implementing
a fairly standard basketball move into the game causes it to crash, though why
he was livestreaming it when it wasn’t fully built yet is anyone’s guess.
We’re introduced to the antagonist of the movie Al-G Rhythm,
an AI wanting to promote… itself mostly. He decides that LeBron James would be perfect as an avatar for
reasons of <insert monologue placed here to satiate LeBron’s ego> so he
sends the idea to WB studios, who invite him in. Basically he’s going to become
the ultimate self-insert character to promote HBOMax, here called WB3000 but
it’s clearly HBOMax. This is a dumb idea, and LeBron agrees, deciding to end
the meeting there and annoying Al-G.
Oh, and here LeBron finds out about Dom’s plan to go to EA
Camp as opposed to basketball camp and there’s an argument about it. Dom storms
off and Al-G leads them to a server room where he somehow has the technology to
digitise the pair of them and bring them into the server-verse. Al-G meets them
and quickly spirits Dom away, saying he’ll send them both home if LeBron wins a
game of basketball.
They send him through some references to the characters who
supposedly share equal billing in this film… Yeah, I started talking about the
Looney Tunes 270 words into my original Space Jam review [less if you count the
animated Moron Mountain stuff as Looney Tunes] here we’re approaching 600 and
not a glimpse of them
But there’s something to this dynamic. One of the complaints
I agreed with over the original Space Jam is that Bugs Bunny should have been
able to outwit the Mon-stars on his own. Setting the stakes before the Looney
Tunes are involved justifies the match needing to take place. So he lands in
the Looney Tunes world, creating a Nike logo because this film is anything but
subtle, and gets a 2D animated form. But the toon-world has been abandoned by
everyone except Bugs Bunny, who seems to have gone a bit mad, well madder than
usual I mean, taking LeBron through a bunch of non-sensical scenarios.
They get in one small dig at LeBron having played for a lot
of teams, they do this joke twice. The original Space Jam took place in a real
point in history for Michael Jordan, one I doubt he looks back on fondly, but
it showed a little bit of self-awareness and humility that LeBron, though I
hear he’s a great guy off-court, just seems to lack, despite being probably the
better actor of the 2.
Anyway, Bugs eventually agrees to help, though partially so
he bring the band back together. They head off, on Marvin the Martian’s
spaceship that they stole, to DCAU-verse, or the low-budget equivalent. Bugs
and LeBron are cosplaying as Batman and Robin for no real reason. Daffy,
cosplaying Superman is doing something I would see Daffy do, deliberately
setting up a scenario that he intends to stop to make himself look good and get
a Justice League invite, with free parking. Normally this would blow up in his
face but here the real Superman stops the train and Daffy and Porky join up
with Bugs.
That was the good one, the rest are less satire and more self-insert
where the characters are playing roles within the films they’re referencing
rather than playing themselves. So they recruit Foghorn Leghorn, who’s riding a
dragon from Game of Thrones, we get Elmer Fudd who’s in Austin Powers,
Sylvester, who’s Doctor Evil’s cat, Granny and Speedy are in the Matrix,
Yosemite Sam is in Casablanca, Gossamer, and Taz who was experimented on by Rick
and Morty, in this film for children.
The problem is two-fold: that’s not a lot of humour in any
of these sketches, beyond LeBron getting increasingly frustrated about not
recruiting from other Warner Bros IPs and second is that most of the target
audience aren’t going to recognise what they’re even referencing. Most of these
Franchises are either decades old or not suited to children, or are somewhat
problematic in this day and age [looking at you: Potterverse]
Needing at least one person who’s at least semi-competent in
Basketball besides LeBron, they head into the DC Comics-verse, which is a
multiverse which is now an Omniverse and also a linear-verse and now there’s a
multiverse 2 and, comics are complicated, alright… Anyway, this is technically
the second DC-verse they’ve done, this one focused on a Trial of the Amazons
and Lola Bunny, who’s once again completely stripped of personality. I like
Zendeya but she brings absolutely nothing to this role. I know they’ve
struggled with bringing Lola out of the 90s strong woman who’s also a sex
object archetype but the Looney Tunes Show and New Looney Tunes managed it.
Once again, there’s a bit of actual comedy here. Lola agrees
to come with them hearing about LeBron’s son, despite her being very generic,
she’s the only one who seems to give even an iota of a shit about LeBron’s son
so I guess I have to give her credit there.
LeBron wants to get the team training but they all begin
getting involved in hijinks. Most Looney Tunes Cartoons from the classic era
weren’t just random nonsense, there was usually some semblance of a story, this
just feels like random nonsense. Back with Al-G, he begins buttering up Dom by
talking about his video game. He’s got some software that can scan people from
their phones, which he’s used to bring basketball players into the game. Al-G
helps him create his own avatar to play against his father in his game to
“prove a point.”
Team Looney Tunes get back the Looney Tunes world but the
training is still not going great. In the real world, LeBron’s family have
arrived at the WB Lot looking for him and they get a message from Twitter about
a father vs son game. Tracking LeBron’s phone, they end up digitised as well.
Time’s up for the Toon Squad as the game literally falls upon them, giving them
CG upgrades, allowing LeBron to blend in in his normal form. I don’t mind it
personally, though I can see the objections.
The seats are filled, first off with residents of the
server-verse including all the cameos you’ll be searching for for the next half
hour because nothing else is going on. Oh hey, we’ve got rapists and murderers
in the front row, thank heaven we cut out Pepe Le Pew or this might’ve been
problematic in this movie aimed at children. He’s then uses the program Dom
developed to digitise all of Dom’s followers and bring them into the audience.
And the stakes are raised as Al-G tells the Toon Squad if he wins the people
will be trapped and the Looney Tunes will be deleted… for some reason.
Al-G reveals his team, the Goon Squad who are much less
interesting than the Mon-Stars, they’re NBA stars with animal stat
modifications and superpowers. And naturally with that they have an opening
advantage. That and LeBron is treating this video game like its proper
basketball and not taking advantage.
And I say nothing interesting happens for the first half of
the game, just the Goons using their abilities to wipe the floor with the
Looney Tunes and LeBron, getting a lead of over 1000 points by half-time.
There’s a gag with Sylvester bringing on Michael Jordan only for it to be
Michael B Jordan. Ha! Anyway, LeBron relents that doing it his way isn’t
working and it’s time to do it the Toon Way.
And because this is a video game and pretty much everything
is allowed, I can’t accuse the Toon Squad of cheating like I did for the first
Space Jam. What I can accuse them of is the most embarrassing excuse for a rap
I’ve ever heard. It’s worth noting that Eric Bauza, who voices Porky in this
film, doesn’t voice him in the Looney Tunes Cartoons, and you can tell because
it’s not a good Porky, not to say he’s a bad voice actor, his Daffy, among
others are decent. But was getting Bob Bergen for Porky too expensive. Also,
Beats product placement, are you fucking kidding me?
Thanks to an admittedly decent gag bit involving Wile E
Coyote, they manage to even up the scores as they get to the end of the third
quarter. It’s here where Al-G begins to show his true colours to Dom. As the
final quarter begins Dom and LeBron confront and finally hash out their
differences, leading to Dom deferring to the Toon Squad. Al-G gets an avatar of
his own with all his skills cranked up and he begins making mincemeat of the
toon squad, who seem to have all-but forgotten the skills that got them ahead
in the last quarter.
And so, much like in the last Space Jam it comes down to a
final play, The goons are 1 point ahead but a single basket could change the
game. Dom realises they could use the move set up in the opening to crash the
game and remove Al-G’s control over it, but when the avatar who used it before
was deleted from the game. LeBron offers to do this but as the play begins,
it’s Bugs who ultimately makes the sacrifice, with LeBron and Dom both making
sure the ball goes in.
The toons are victorious and Al-G is for some reason made
into a playing card, good luck with Warner 3000 now, I guess. All the others go
home to their servers or the real world but Bugs Bunny is dead, for real. He
gets an emotional goodbye scene and every… Who am I kidding? He shows up alive
again in the next scene, where LeBron lets Dom go to video game camp and the
Toons are in the real world, somehow. Was the real-world part of the
server-verse all along? Did anyone really get freed? Or did the…
Yeah, this film sucks hard. Where to even begin. The Looney
Tunes barely have time to do anything really funny, like the whole point of a
Space Jam movie. They don’t feel like themselves in this movie, Bugs
especially. I was never a fan of Jeff Bergman’s portrayal, particularly his
more recent version, but it felt really off in this one.
Beyond Bugs, Daffy and Lola, you wouldn’t even remember the
dialogue from anyone else. Speedy speaks a bit of Spanish, Granny’s the badass
old lady stereotype that died a decade ago, and the others are just there for
most of it.
On a semi-related note there’s been a thing in recent
portrayals of Foghorn Leghorn of him doing “I say, I say” without actually
saying anything afterwards, look back at original shorts, that did not happen
and it’s irritating.
LeBron being cast as grump when from what I hear he’s far
from it is such a perplexing choice. Michael Jordan played a warped version of
himself. LeBron is a completely different person to his real-life counterpart,
despite sharing the name. The arc is actually pretty half-baked too, though
that can be said for most of the arcs really. None of the tunes wanted to come
back to the Looney-Verse, they just did under obligation.
Then there’s the dark poisonous undercurrent of this. It’s a
glorified ad for HBOMax. Let’s start with the fact that this film was made
available on release for free for HBOMax subscribers which means it failed its
original goal of drawing more people to the app. The second being that HBOMax
has not rolled out internationally yet. Meaning that a large chunk of its
target audience can’t be swayed by the app anyway.
This film was a waste of LeBron and more importantly a waste
of the Looney Tunes
Rage Rating: 456%
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