Before I get to any kind of reviewing of this film, I have to start off with a statement:

IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE PEOPLE THAT IS LEGITIMATELY UPSET THAT THEY MADE LOLA BUNNY “LESS ATTRACTIVE”, GO OUTSIDE, TAKE SOME DEEP BREATHS AND GET A FUCKING GRIP YOU WEIRDO.

With that out of the way, it is time to talk about this movie. Space Jam: A New Legacy is history repeating itself in that it is an NBA player teaming up with the Looney Tunes to defeat a bad guy in a game of basketball. It is also history repeating itself in the fact that it is LeBron James doing something that Michael Jordan has already done, but not as good.

In all seriousness (although I am serious when I say MJ > LeBron, all day every day. Come at me) this movie is not good. That being said, I can see a child watching it in amazement just like I did with the original Space Jam. There is nothing wrong with loving a movie like this (or the original), despite the fact that neither of them are objectively good movies. However, what is wrong is using this film as an advertising space for HBO Max, which is the streaming home to Warner Brothers in the US. In this movie, we see references to Casablanca, The Matrix, Mad Max: Fury Road, Rick & Morty, It, A Clockwork Orange, Austin Powers, Game of Thrones and an erotic thriller about some demon nuns called The Devils. All of these are referenced in a movie aimed at children. Some of these (Casablanca, The Matrix) are irrelevant to children but the others are straight up inappropriate.

I am also going to have to address LeBron’s acting in this. Now, I know he isn’t a professional actor so I won’t hold him to that standard. But when you make Michael Jordan look like Denzel Washington, something is really wrong. The crazy thing is, LeBron was in a film a few years back called Trainwreck, and he was not only convincing as an actor, but hilarious. This leads me to believe that he could be good if he was given a competent script, something which this movie does not have. So while I won’t hold LeBron’s subpar acting against the movie, it does make the first 20-30 minutes quite rough, as it focuses fully on LeBron and his “son” and their family drama. You see, his son doesn’t really like basketball. He is creating a video game using what can only be described as a “groundbreaking” scanning technology, but instead of being impressed, Bron is all like “that’s weak. Be good at basketball, scrub.” I may be paraphrasing but that’s pretty close. All of this family drama culminates into LeBron dabbing, then having by far the cringiest scene that doesn’t involve a rap battle. Steven Yeun, current Hollywood hot commodity after starring in Minari and Invincible, seemed like he couldn’t be less interested in being in the movie if he tried. The final nail in this terrible start is LeBron falling to Looney Tune World and giving the most half-hearted scream in the history of movie screams.

Now this review has been overly negative, but this is where the movie starts to pick up (minus the weird references to shit kids don’t care about). The next few scenes are completely animated, including LeBron, and the animation is truly stunning throughout. We get some fun scenes with Bron and Bugs teaming up to recruit teammates and while the rest of the movie isn’t good, it is definitely fun. I will say though, if you are expecting an actual basketball game, you are going to be sorely disappointed.

Overall, this is not a great movie, but chuck it on with the kids and you will get a laugh or two out of it. Also, keep an eye out for the “Michael Jordan cameo” as I got a good laugh out of that.