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No life in the eyes, no heart in the story: the new Spice Jam is a spit in the face of nostalgia

For 25 years, the world has been waiting for the sequel to Michael Jordan's Spice Jam.

The new version with LeBron James is a good example of why it is better to be careful with our wishes.

A critique that ends in spoilers (with a warning beforehand), but it's better to stay away from this cinematic abomination anyway

Tags

• Spice Jam 2

• Space Jam

• LeBron James

• Michael Jordan

• Bugs Bunny

Living Room Fellow

Thursday, 15 July 2021, 21:31 Updated: Friday, 16 July 2021, 09:25

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Be careful with what you hope for.

Poster of the movie "Spice Jam: A New Legend" (Photo: yes planet)

It has been 25 years since the movie "Spice Jam" starring Michael Jordan and the heroes of the Looney Tunes was released.

For someone who was a kid at the time, the film became an instant classic.

A box office hit that earned a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office, plus another estimated $ 1.2 billion in merchandise sales.

And that's even before we talked about the comic book series, DVD sales, computer games, etc.

Like King Midas, who touched everything that turned to gold, so too did Michael Jordan continue to prove that he could not fail in any field.

Okay, maybe except for baseball.

The film's great success encouraged Warner to work on a sequel, again starring Michael Jordan. In "Spice Jam 2", the basketball star was supposed to return and collaborate with his cartoon friends in front of an evil and colorful alien, a role intended for the legendary Mel Brooks. Jordan finally refused to do the sequel, and the Warner Brothers buried the project. Later came up with ideas for spin-offs such as "Spy Jam" starring Jackie Chan, "Golf Jam" with Tiger Woods, "Rice Jam" with Jeff Gordon, "Skate Jam" With Tony Hawk and other ideas cut short in their ib for the simplest reason: Warner people feared that without Michael Jordan, it just would not work. They were right.

In the absence of Jordan, the Warner Brothers produced the lovable and forgotten "Lonnie Tunes: Returning to Action" starring Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman and Steve Martin.

The film, which was released in 2003, received better reviews than "Spice Jam", but failed miserably at the box office.

Hollywood has already started talking about the "Jordan Curse."

In the 18 years since, no Looney Tunes movie has been released.

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To the full article

25 years to the magical encounter between Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan (Photo: From the movie "Spice Jam")

One of those kids who saw the original "Spice Jam" in real time was LeBron James, then not yet 12. He said it had become his dream.

Not to play with Michael Jordan, but with Bugs Bunny, Duffy Duck, Sylvester and Tweety.

He is now fulfilling it in "Spice Jam: The Legend Continues," which hits theaters around the world this weekend, as well as Warner's HBO Max streaming service.

While the sports world continues to argue the grueling question "Is LeBron James a bigger basketball player than Michael Jordan?", LeBron has managed to prove in the new film that he is at least a better film actor.

The role written for him was also more complex, but here in fact ends the comparison that does a favor with the film.

The marketing people took over the creative work and drew the fun out of the story (Photo: LeBron James, from Spice Jam: A New Legend, Warner Bros. Films (C) Courtesy of Tulip Entertainment)

The film was entrusted to director Malcolm Di Lee, who like his cousin Spike Lee, most of his films are based on African-American experiences and heroes. The opening of the film still left some opening for the work with some cinematic depth, with the portrayal of LeBron James as a complex black character, who came from poverty and hard work and became rich beyond imagination - but the short exposition is very quickly forgotten. For a moment it seems that Warner's marketers have taken over the directing work of this soulless film.

The problem is not only in the comparison between LeBron and Michael, but in the story itself.

In the original film they took the true story of Michael Jordan, who retired from basketball and suffered a shuffling baseball career, and put it into a cartoon of a little less than an hour and a half.

Along the way he had Bill Murray and Wayne Knight (Newman from "Seinfeld") in light-hearted comedic roles.

that was fun.

This time they took the story of Hollywood and the modern commercial film world, wrapped it in a bit of a misunderstanding of technology, and shoved it down the throat of LeBron James fans.

Even with the addition of half an hour, somehow the result is much less fun.

The eyes wander precisely to what is happening behind LeBron and Bugs Bunny (Photo: LeBron James, from Spice Jam: New Legend, Warner Bros. Films (C) Courtesy of Tulip Entertainment)

The mention of HBO Max (not available in Israel) is not accidental.

The new film, which lasts almost two hours, becomes in many moments an exhausting and rather embarrassing service broadcast to the content available on Warner's streaming service.

Ironically / self-consciously / completely dumb the script refers to this.

The character of LeBron James arrives in the film at Warner Studios, where a senior member of the company (Sarah Silverman in a small role who does not utilize her comedic skills) offers him to integrate virtually into Warner's content.

LeBron vehemently refuses the offer, claiming it is a terrible pitch.

"One of the worst things I've ever heard," LeBron attacks the dumb idea.

Then the film does just that.

(Henceforth spoilers)

LeBron finds himself in a very inelegant way in the world of Game of Thrones, that of Harry Potter, the Matrix, Superman, Wonder Woman, in one of the universes of "Rick and Morty" and finally, of all the gin dens all over the world, he had to enter the place of Rick Blaine in Casablanca.

I wonder how many children will understand this reference, or at all.

As in the original film, this time too the climactic scene in the film includes a basketball game by LeBron James and the heroes of the Looney Tunes against a team of monsters, but in a strange decision the audience in the game consists of characters from Warner's nostalgic content worlds, in a strange orgy of nostalgia and marketing.

Here everything becomes especially fucked up.

Caution, from here everything gets particularly fucked up, not to be seen in the deadly facial expressions of the Looney Tunes (Photo: From Spice Jam: New Legend, Warner Bros. Films (C) Courtesy of Tulip Entertainment)

While on the court there is a basketball game between the best basketball player of his generation and the CGI characters, the eyes begin to wander to the crowd cheering around the court. There are, among others, the Joker from Batman, the clown Pennywise from the films "It", "The Mask" by Jim Carrey, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch from the West, Voldemort, the White Hells from "Game of Thrones" and also Alex's gang from "Orange" mechanical". You know, the funny people who abuse elderly homeless people and rape the women of high society. Laughter! It is well known that no children's movie can really work without a sadistic gang of rapists. It's really interesting who's the genius at Warner Bros. who thought characters from "Mechanical Orange" would fit into a Bugs Bunny movie.

To add insult to injury, all the characters in the audience are animated in a basic, completely lifeless 3D animation. Not that we expected Betty Davis to be brought in to play Baby Jane (in my life it happens there) or the original nuns who were sexually abused in Ken Russell's 'Demons' (go explain it to your child) to play the familiar characters, but the choice placed Computer characters at the lowest level, look a little weird in a movie with a budget of $ 150 million. Precisely in the climactic moments of the film, it is hard not to notice that the animated characters do not even bother to look in the direction in which the action takes place, which was mainly reminiscent of watching computer games from the 1990s.

And it ends not only in the secondary characters, but also in the classic characters of Bugs, Duffy, Elmer Pad and their friends.

To give a modern touch to the film, it was decided that in the main part of the film the characters would get an upgrade to 3D, a very unfortunate fact considering that all the classic magic of the characters is simply slaughtered with the arrival of the third dimension.

Bugs' eyes look lifeless, Lola's "sexy" expressions have turned into zombies, even Duffy's humor suddenly feels like something racist we are not supposed to laugh at.

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Then came the final moment of the game that stretched far beyond what was desirable, in a way that made the NBA Finals series seem like a short and to the point. For complicated technical reasons that the young target audience can hardly understand at all - Bugs Bunny was forced to sacrifice his life for LeBron James. I will repeat the last words, because this is not something I thought I would ever have to write: Bugs Bunny is sacrificing his life. dead. Inflate his last soul. Went to meet his creator. His mythological figure is erased from the screen and his body becomes a star in the sky. It really happened. In a children's film. A girl in a row behind me started crying, another boy demanded that his parents go home. The parents jumped out of their chairs and fled the hall in a panic.

It was one of the biggest WTF moments I got to see on a movie screen.

It takes way too long until the film decides to take us out of the shock.

The caption on the screen says "a week later," and in the next scene LeBron and his son are already fooling around with a bullet, as if not just a week ago Bugs Bunny sacrificed his life for them.

Finally Bugs returns of course, explaining to LeBron that he is a cartoon character so he can not die.

LeBron is happy, but does not think to even call his little children and inform them that they can get up from the shiva.

Who would have thought it would be a good idea to kill Bugs Bunny?

(Photo: From Spice Jam: New Legend, Warner Bros. Films (C) Courtesy of Tulip Entertainment)

Another huge problem of the film, in relation to the original and in general, is especially noticeable in the villain: in the original film it is a cartoon alien with amusing minions. This time it's Don Cheadle, the excellent character actor who does give a great performance, but only illustrates how utterly silly the whole story of the film is.

Cheadle embodies a computer-generated algorithm called Al-J Rhythm (Did You Understand the Sophistication?) That drags LeBron and his son Doom (Cedric Joe) into the world of Warner Bros.'s server world, effectively causing them to compete in a basketball game. Game lovers who think that the long and complicated introduction will be worth at least for the sports segments, will be surprised to find that compared to the first film, this time it is not really a basketball game, but a version called "Dom Ball". Supposedly a creative version of the game, which actually looks like an imitation of the classic NBA JAM, where you get points not only for the baskets that hit, but also for style. For example, in a section that can perhaps be crowned as the most horrible in the film, Forki Pig bursts into a long rap section and wins full points.

While in the first movie what wins the game for Michael Jordan and his friends is their talent, when Bugs gives them a drink of water and tells them that it's the potion that makes Jordan so great.

The new movie really has a "potion" when LeBron's son arranges a "cheat" that helps him win the game with an advantage.

By the way, Michael Jordan's victory in the first film was in the magical result 77:78, while in the new film LeBron wins in the silly result 1041: 1042.

It may be an arrow of criticism towards the modern basketball game, the one that dominates LeBron James, but it's hard to believe that the person who wrote this movie loves basketball enough to care about it.

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