Space Jam: A New Legacy

A near-about rehash of the original Space Jam (1996), this sequel, dubbed Space Jam: A New Legacy, is a mostly an uncomedic meh.

Replacing Michael Jordan from the original is the current king of basketball, Lebron James. Replacing the worm-like aliens from the original is an A.I. programme named Al-G Rhythm (Don Cheadle, swinging between ho-hum and hammy). Replacing the joy of the original is tedium.

Bugs Bunny and most of the Loony Tunes are relegated to the backseat while Lebron, his fictional family and their family troubles are given the spotlight.

Lebron wants his son, played by Cedric Joe, to excel in basketball; the boy is a whiz when it comes to designing video games. Al-G, angry at LeBron for brushing off a Warner Bros. proposal to use his likeness to create a long-lasting sports star-driven franchise, uses the boy to trap his father in a simulated reality inside the Warner Bros. computer servers. The only way out for LeBron is to assemble a rag-tag team of toons, who can help him win a basketball match against Al-G’s unstoppable team.

Space Jam: A New Legacy is a remake that replaces the joy of the original with tedium, while The Forever Purge seems to be a milking of the cash cow before the launch a new franchise

At times, Legacy comes off as a publicity campaign of all the franchises WB owns — LeBron and Bugs, after commandeering Marvin the Martian’s flying saucer, fly though planets representing the DC animated universe, such as The Matrix-verse and the Harry Potter-verse — and the sequence feels as if WB is flexing its IPs, like Disney.

In the climatic basketball game, when Al-G brings over every creation whose rights WB owns in the stadium, there’s a gazillion blink-and-miss cameos. Sitting on the sidelines one sees everyone from Fred Flintstone — and most of Hannah-Barbera characters — to King Kong high-fiving Iron Giant. This mass inclusion reminds one of Spielberg’s Ready Player One, only less appealing.

The film is expensive and the animation — 2D in the first three-quarters of the run-time, 3D in the last — is top-notch. But then again, what did you expect?

Legacy’s biggest shortfall — credited to an army of screenwriters Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Keenan Coogler, Terence Nance, Jesse Gordon and Celeste Ballard — is its misrepresentation of Bugs and Daffy (voiced by Jeff Bergman and Eric Bauza); the two — especially Daffy — have few scenes that do them justice.

Space Jam — or any movie featuring a mix of animated characters and live-action actors — is as much about the cartoons as it is about the real people (one great example is Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit). No one side should overpower the other. And most important of all, it has to be fun. Here, the material never elevates above kiddie tele-movie level.

Released on HBO Max and Cinemas, Space Jam: A New Legacy is rated PG for cartoony-violence.

The Forever Purge

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Isn’t it typical: just when you thought it was over, the cash cow is milked yet once again.

In The Forever Purge, a young couple Adela and Juan (Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta) flee from cartel-ridden Mexico into the United States. It would have been better if they had stayed in their country, because America’s new government has just reinstated the annual purge, a 12-hour free reign to anyone in the country to kill and plunder without consequences. The purge was finally stopped in the end of Purge: Election Year, but it seems that the US citizens didn’t want the gory festivities to end.

The story is straightforward: some good-hearted well-off Caucasians (Josh Lucas, Cassidy Freeman, Leven Rambin and Will Patton round up the cast) try to survive the purge with Adela, Juan and others from different minorities. To their bewilderment, the purge doesn’t stop with one night this time round. The anarchy extends into a perpetual killing spree called “The Forever Purge”. In one day, America is toppled, and, in an ironic reversal of fortune, the best chance for anyone’s survival becomes a race to the border.

The Forever Purge is the starting point of the next phase of the franchise, which might lead to a film series on a worldwide purge. The story still hits remarkably close to home, commenting on issues of racial and ethnic bigotry, while delivering a somewhat enjoyable action movie experience. The juice is almost out of this one, so relish whatever entertainment you’re getting out of the series for now.

Released by Universal, The Forever Purge is rated R for violence and death.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 1st, 2021