Joe Pytka, the director of the original Space Jame movie, was a little more polite than I might have been since he praised LeBron James’ acting ability in Space Jam: A New Legacy when the truth is that LeBron is a great athlete, but he’s not much of an actor. On top of that, the second Space Jam movie started out about like the first one, as it went on to glorify LeBron and his career with a serious diss to video games and a harsh outlook on what it really takes to get anywhere in life, particularly in the NBA. But where Michael Jordan’s personal story in the first movie showed the rough transition from his basketball to baseball career, which was just as horrible as the movie shows, there was a serious lack of any reason why people should have cared about LeBron’s own personal journey since it’s kind of a case of ‘boo hoo, he’s a demanding father that can provide everything for his kids’. Yeah, that sounds petty, but it also sounds true since there wasn’t any real danger in this movie or any challenge that had to be met.
Al G. Rhythm was going to trap everyone in the Serververse if LeBron’s team didn’t win, right? What was stopping him from doing this in the first place? He had Dom’s tech, which was insane, even for this time period, for any kid to have on hand, much less on their phone. But on top of that, the second movie was a serious glut of Warner Bros. properties that didn’t really have much of anything to do with the overall story and ended up relegating the many different characters as poorly conceived extras that didn’t need to be there. In a big way, it was WB’s way of saying “Look at what we’ve got.” Just imagine Disney doing this same thing and then realize how overwhelmed WB would be at this point. Granted, WB has a lot of properties, but they kind of played themselves by showing their hand at this point.
The first movie did a lot more with a lot less and has been held up as one of the best animated/live-action hybrids of all time at this point even if there are gaping plot holes in it. The current Space Jam plays out like a serious ego trip to make LeBron out to be the ideal person that simply needs to let his kid do his thing, which could have reduced this movie to thirty minutes or less. On top of that, the villain, played by Don Cheadle, was something that one would expect WB to take responsibility for even in a movie since it was their algorithm that caused all of the trouble. Stop laughing just for a moment after reading about the WB taking responsibility, since someone would make it happen in the real world, that much is obvious. But the fact is that there wasn’t any real conflict in this movie, no matter that the algorithm was the main enemy. The original Space Jam touched on a serious issue, since if Jordan hadn’t won, then he and the Tunes would have belonged to Moron Mountain, and their lives were already spelled out since they would have become indentured servants, or slaves if one wants to put it that way.
I know, I know, such a thing ‘couldn’t be made today’ and all that jazz, but the fact is that Pytka is right in thinking that the new Space Jam isn’t worth much since, well, it isn’t. The box office numbers say otherwise obviously, but they tend to do that since there are a lot of LeBron fans out there that won’t allow themselves to say anything bad about the ‘King’ and will come up with every way possible to glorify this movie, even if they get sick to their stomach in the process. The movie wasn’t entirely bad, since the Tunes were still hilarious, and seeing them interact with other WB properties was kind of interesting. But apart from that, LeBron’s presence in this movie was more than a little irritating since he’s not an actor, and he’s not convincing, not even a little bit.
Just to make it clear, bashing Space Jam 2 isn’t the intent, but stating why it doesn’t measure up to the first movie is, since, like Pytka, I’m not entirely convinced that this movie was worth the effort, since it was bound to be a lot of the same with a big update that would draw in more fans and make them aware of just how much WB really owns. If not for the Serververse and the need to display just about every property they have, the WB might have been able to make this movie a little more enjoyable.
