Twenty-five years after the corporate synergy slam dunk known as Space Jam lodged itself in the fickle hearts of 90s kids everywhere (and in their parents' wallets) comes the inevitable razzle-dazzle reboot, its sights set on the nostalgia-prone among us as much as a new generation of impressionable, merch-mongering youngsters.
First announced in 2014, the LeBron James-fronted Space Jam: A New Legacy beat out earlier, tantalisingly half-baked concepts for sequels that would've seen the Looney Tunes diversify their skillset, as paired with Jackie Chan (Spy Jam), Tony Hawk (Skate Jam) or Tiger Woods (…Golf Jam?).
What's finally been delivered by director Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip), backed by a team of writers numerous enough to join a social basketball league, is a bombastically unimaginative, Ready Player One-style concatenation of Warner Brothers IP, so over-engineered as to make the slapdash plotting and shameless stupidity of the original – if the term 'original' can rightfully be applied to a film so deeply mired in simulacrum – appear utterly quaint and even charming.
By stepping eagerly into the Nikes vacated by Michael Jordan, James – who has sported a number 23 jersey as a self-aggrandising tribute to the Bulls legend on and off since his high school b-ball days – has again positioned himself as his heir apparent in the realm of personal branding (the film is produced by his own SpringHill Company) as well as untrammelled athleticism.
And while James, like Jordan before him, is essentially playing the straight man to the nominally "loony" Tunes (if only they were!), he seems determined to prove himself the better onscreen sport: where MJ played things a little stiff, a little embarrassed, with his cartoon co-stars, King James fully commits to a role that entails grooving proudly to a rap verse spat by Porky Pig (voiced by Eric Bauza), amongst other minor but potent humiliations.
Maybe sometimes you shouldn't leave it all on the court.
Lee fails to make good use of the comedy chops James tentatively showed off in Judd Apatow's Trainwreck, as a version of himself who can't help but offer counsel that's comically non-applicable to his normie best friend, played by Bill Hader.
In Space Jam, when James isn't fan-boying out on the Tunes or any number of the other Warner Bros. "properties" who get dragged out for cameo appearances, he does little more than issue motivational quotes ("You can't be great without putting in work"; "Adversity is part of the process") with all the irony of my Nike Run app.
The target of these bromides is most often his younger son Dom (Cedric Joe), whose preference for computerised sports over the real thing LeBron cannot accept, despite the boy's fantastical programming abilities.
When both of them get sucked into the Warner Brothers "server-verse", courtesy of a rogue algorithm anthropomorphised with icky gusto by Don Cheadle, the domineering dad must learn to both lighten up and respect his whiz-kid son's interests – though not before they've faced off against one another on a virtual court of Dom's flashy design.
But the film is ultimately less 'a LeBron James vehicle' than James is the vehicle for the film. His journey through the server-verse is actually just an excuse to rifle through a series of films and TV shows – picking up a "dream team" of Tunes along the way – with rather less cleverness than you'd find in the average deepfake made by a teenager named Yevgeniy, and less rhyme or reason to the curation than your old iPod shuffle.
To catalogue this "content" would be both boring (as it was to watch) and a capitulation to the studio's onanistic cross-marketing ploy – suffice to say, perhaps, that I can't think of any demographic whose funny bones would be tickled by the sight of Yosemite Sam plonking away at the piano of Rick's Cafe in Casablanca.
Tune Squad duly assembled – Bugs and Sylvester (both voiced, amongst other roles, by Jeff Bergman), Daffy and Elmer Fudd (two more of Bauza's charges), the newly de-vamped Lola Bunny (Zendaya), etc.; the gang's all there, bar poor Pepe Le Pew – it's time for the 'big game', this time around versus a "Goon Squad" comprised of digitally augmented ball-players plus Dom, and presided over by Handle's sequin-tracksuited baddie, Al G Rhythm.
It's here that the full brunt of the film's garish forced-nostalgia fest makes itself felt: welcome to the Space Jam, an actual Baudrillardian hellscape, where the stands are packed to the rafters with an offensively random swarm of the studio's most beloved characters (TM).
All this CGI spectacle is designed to obfuscate the fact that the dramatic beats of the game mirror almost exactly those of its predecessor. Indeed, from the opening flashback to the L.A. Lakers player's youth right through to the crucial, last-second basket of the climactic showdown, Lee and co. cling disappointingly close to the structure of Joe Pytka's unholy urtext, while the attempt to up the emotional ante with a father-son story arc feels tantamount to gaslighting.
Don't get cute with me now, Warner Brothers – just admit that you're selling something and get on with the gags, and play some bangin' tracks while you're at it. (No! Not Porky Pig!)
If the 1996 Space Jam was really just a glorified Nike commercial, at least it was extremely weird, and could be said to have captured some of the anarchic inventiveness on which the Tunes have historically fed (so too their last big screen venture, Joe Dante's totally enjoyable bomb Looney Tunes: Back in Action, from 2003).
This new iteration, while a smoother, more sensical ride, has had any such spirit massaged right out of it. It's in the sheer blandness of its pop culture sludge – algorithmically generated product stuffed into a spangled tracksuit – that the horror lies.
Space Jam: A New Legacy is in cinemas from July 15.
