NBA star LeBron James and Bugs Bunny star in Space Jam: A New Legacy. In cinemas now.
NBA superstar LeBron James shares the screen with characters owned by Warner Bros. for this follow-up to the 1996 Michael Jordan live action/animation hybrid beloved by those who saw it as a kid and nobody else.
The plot sees James (playing himself alongside actors portraying his family) sucked into the
Warner Bros. 'Server-Verse' after a meeting at the venerable film studio. There he teams up with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other WB cartoon favourites (who are quickly upgraded from traditional animation to somewhat soulless CGI) to compete in a crazy basketball(-esque) game in order to rescue his son Dom (Cedric Joe), who has fallen under the influence of a vengeful algorithm personified by Don Cheadle.
So the 'space' this time around is cyberspace, and the server context means we glimpse worlds centered around Warners-controlled properties like Game of Thrones, The Matrix, Casablanca, Harry Potter and more.
Once the game is underway, the crowd is made up of even more WB characters, so we get to see The Mask (not played by Jim Carrey) cheering on the sidelines alongside The Penguin from the '60s Batman show, The Penguin from Batman Returns and the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. And Pennywise from It. And so on.
It's distracting to say the least, and basically renders this a brazen showcase of the company's intellectual property assets devoid of narrative purpose. It's feels more like a shareholder meeting than a movie.
