With me being in that same generation that was brought up on the original 'Space Jam', I feel this review could count more than ones that weren't.
My first memory of seeing the 1996 predecessor was at school where the teachers did one of their few film screenings in our assembly room. One of them was 'Space Jam' and I remember having a blast watching this with the perfect target audience.
What made it work was that it had that vintage Looney Tunes style of humor, frenetic pacing, a functional underdog story with cool pop culture references for all ages and Michael Jordan doing a better acting job than expected.
After that, it's popularity has grown over the years as my generation has grown older and voiced our opinion of our childhood classics that deserve a sequel within social media.
When I heard this was now in the works, I was naturally excited. But with LeBron James as the star this time, I was a bit unsure as how this would go due to him not being an actor. To keep my hopes up, just kept saying to myself "if MJ can make it work, King James can". With updated technology, I knew this had the potential of being a success.
Well it's safe to say it got off to a rough start. It was cool seeing them doing a similar opening credits to the original. But outside of that, I was fearing I could be experiencing a disaster. This was due to the early signs of the story's themes being highly familiar and simple in its execution, the introduction of the villain being pretty poor with Don Cheadle just 'hamming' it up and knowing exactly what type of film he is part of and most importantly, LeBron James could not act.
To add to my fears was the shocking amount of shameless plugging of other properties Warner Bros. own within this film. It felt desperate and lazy on the writing aspect. It looked like the studio was trying to show the audience how cool and current they still are by combining all of their properties and making it look like a poor man's Ready Player One. I must confess, they did create some cool franchise cross-over moments which I am a sucker for.
Thankfully, there was something to fall back once we get into the Looney Tunes side of the story. The animation style was a nice mix of classic and current, most of the visual and written gags felt like vintage Toons and there were nice moments paying homage to some classic Looney Tunes moments of the past to please the fans.
While there were still the same problems from before and the duration started to drag, various parts of the film were keeping me entertained. Such as how they did the Basketball, making it more arcade like in its format.
I'm sad to say that the acting was not that good. LeBron James' performance made me appreciate Michael Jordan's a lot more. As mentioned before, Cheadle was just there for the paycheck and came nowhere to near to Danny Devito's efforts as the villain. Outside of the solid voicework for the Toons characters, Cedric Joe was the only acting positive who was pretty decent for what he was given. Sadly, there was no Bill Murray or Wayne Knight scene-stealing moments from the supporting cast.
The films biggest strength was probably the visual effects. While it wasn't the complete package and it took over the imagery a bit too much, they enhanced certain aspects that the original never could and was great to see.
I have to give a negative to the costume design, which I was not expecting to do beforehand. It is solely to do with the goings on in the third act. There are a lot of extras that are supposed to be iconic characters from various WB platforms. But the quality of the costumes felt like I was watching a fancy dress party or one of those terrible parody movies from the early 2000's such as Epic Movie or Disaster Movie.
It's definitely not a disaster. There is enough fun and entertainment to make it ok viewing. But I cannot give it a pass I'm afraid. I feel the kids will enjoy this more than the adults. However, I can see this being forgotten quite quickly after seeing it. It's 30mins longer than the original, and I felt every minute of those 30. It did not need to be that long at all.
I was disappointed to see this being a glorified advert about Warner Bros. There was enough material for a it to be it's own thing. For me, what made the original Space Jam a success was that while it came across as crazy and silly. It was coherent and super fun with a comedy style that has been winning audiences over for decades. Stick to the original or go back to the old cartoons.
Rating: 6/10
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