Tonight we had family movie night and put our HBO Max subscription to use as our son wanted to see this, but not enough to go to the theater to see it, and even I know my limits. While the original the first
Space Jam from 1996, I can appreciate how it's aged and its place in that time of movie history; it doesn't hold that big a place in my heart as some hold it, mainly since I am not a sports fan. This one feels that there were many forcing things into place just to get the sequel made, and then because of HBO Max shoehorn in as many character cameos they could get even if they come off as the Spirit Halloween store version of the costumes. Now that I spoiled that little bit for you, here's a little bit of what happens leading up to the big event. We get a little bit of young Lebron James at the beginning that doesn't add much of anything, then we catch up with Lebron and his fake family; I found this nagging at me that its about real-life person Lebron James in the modern day where he is in his career, but its a fictional family. While Lebron James has been advancing his basketball career, Warner Bros has been trying to out-tech Apple and Google with the Warner 3000, a giant underground server network that has a self-aware algorithm running it and decides it has the greatest idea ever, putting Lebron into all the Warner Bros properties when this algorithm's plan is laughed at, the program decides to go full-on
Tron and bring Lebron and his son into the server universe, and the only way out is for Lebron and his son to captain teams opposite of each other. Because like all sports movies with a parent and child, there is the divide where the kid wants to do one thing, and the parent wants the kid to follow in their footsteps and learn to let them go their own way. Lebron gets sent to the Tuneverse, where he finds Bugs Bunny, who convinces Lebron they need the Tune gang as the ultimate team; this leads to what I found most entertaining in the movie is these little like SNL sketches of Lebron and Looney Tune characters injected in cartoon and movie scenes. His son goes off to build a team of other basketball players that are monsterized into the Goon Squad. Then its time for the main event and Lebron to learn some lessons on individuality while the fate of thousands of digitally imported fans from around the world, don't ask, relies on him winning the game, or all the spectators will spend the rest of their lives in the server verse. This is a total throw-away movie; I do not see it having the lasting impact
Space Jam has had in culture. It was enjoyable seeing Sonequa Martin-Green outside of the
Star Trek universe, even though she is not given as much to do as she could have. If you are a Lebron James fan, this commercial will be for you. There are some entertaining Looney Tunes moments, but if that's what you want, just go watch the actual cartoons. I gave this 1.5 stars only because of those Looney Tune moments; otherwise, it would be a 1-star.
