| Warner Bros. | Release Date: July 16, 2021 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
4
Mixed:
23
Negative:
19
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Critic Reviews
The PlaylistJul 14, 2021
This newest “Space Jam” installment is a good time and boasts real heart. LeBron’s steady work as the lead and a narrative undercurrent built on a believable father-son relationship makes for a breezy 115 minutes and improves on the harmless, yet admittedly stiff original. And while LeBron might not be in the Finals right now, he has definitely scored a win here.
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Jul 14, 2021
Space Jam: A New Legacy enters the 21st century with LeBron James, impressive visuals, more personal stakes, and a fantastic villain in Don Cheadle. Unfortunately, the movie is too concerned with showcasing Warner Bros.’ biggest franchises that Bugs Bunny and Friends get sidelined in their own movie.
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Jul 20, 2021
Though Space Jam: A New Legacy fails, woefully, as an aesthetic object and as a viewing experience, it somehow nonetheless succeeds as a conceptual representation of a Hollywood studio’s terror in the face of streaming domination, of the movie industry at large that, like Warner Bros., is in the process of being swallowed up in one Serververse or another.
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Jul 19, 2021
A New Legacy is much slicker and more appealing than the original Space Jam, in no small part because James is approximately 50 times the actor Jordan is. But it’s also because corporations handing a bag of unrelated IP and ordering screenwriters to come up with a story around them is the template for most studio filmmaking now, if not all of contemporary existence.
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Jul 14, 2021
The original Space Jam was an out-of-nowhere delight, and Jordan gave space to his fellow live action co-stars, such as Bill Murray, Larry Bird and Wayne Knight. It was also in and out in 87 minutes; Space Jam: A New Legacy, directed by a good filmmaker, Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip, The Best Man), is a bloated 115 minutes, its mayhem and madness wearing pretty thin as it goes along.
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The Film StageJul 14, 2021
A New Legacy fails to deliver on Who Framed Roger Rabbit-type spectacle, despite its exciting formal conceit of being able to weave between live-action and flat or CG animation. What felt like the twentieth sighting of Pennywise and the Penguin as extras cheering court-side during the climactic game exemplifies this film’s lack of imagination in visualizing basketball, or rather its digital universe.
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Movie NationJul 14, 2021
Director Malcolm D. Lee (“Girls Trip,” “The Best Man”) and the credited screenwriters try to wring a little fun out of all this, and miss as often as they hit. But younger kids will eat up the eye candy and get a tiny taste of what The Looney Tunes were all about, even if this big budget monstrosity never comes close to the anarchy created by Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and the team at Warner Brothers’ “Termite Terrace.”
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Jul 14, 2021
Maybe the rabbit and his studio both took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Space Jam: A New Legacy takes almost nothing but wrong turns, all leading to a glittering CGI trash heap of cameos, pat life lessons, and stale internet catchphrases. Its first misstep: keeping Bugs, Daffy, and the rest of the gang on the bench for about as long as it would take the audience to watch three and a half Merrie Melodies.
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Jul 21, 2021
The concept is ripe for biting satire at how super-serving content can often by detrimental to art and creativity, but instead Space Jam: A New Legacy is a briefly and all-too-infrequently enjoyable hybrid of sports comedy and family drama that doubles as egregious product placement on the largest possible scale.
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Jul 16, 2021
Critics will pick on this overstuffed sequel to the 1996 animated-live-action hoops hit. It’s what we do when an alleged creative enterprise turns into a corporate ad campaign. Expect no grumbles from the under-13 crowd eager to eyeball LeBron James jamming in cyberspace with cartoon royalty.
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Jul 14, 2021
Like most corporate cinematic endeavors, Space Jam: A New Legacy tries to have it both ways, proclaiming to be on the side of the angels while doing the work of the Devil. It criticizes shameless, money-grubbing attempts to synergize and update beloved classics (as LeBron himself puts it, “This idea is just straight-up bad”) … all the while shamelessly synergizing and updating beloved classics.
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Jul 14, 2021
There’s a nearly astute satire of the app-driven life bubbling under the meta high jinks. And the movie throws so many gags at the screen that several jokes actually stick. But the purposeful sensory overload mostly yields head-spinning stupefaction, leaving a viewer feeling like Wile E. Coyote after hitting a mesa wall.
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Jul 16, 2021
It wants to comment on the algorithms that rule our lives, spewing constantly recycled content at us seemingly at random, but it is exactly the thing that it points to: an upcycled Frankenstein’s monster of intellectual property spraying a stew of Easter eggs and Halloween costumes at the viewer, praying that something sticks.
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Jul 14, 2021
Throughout the game, during the action sequences and especially during the timeouts and strategy sessions, the “celebrity” fans are a huge distraction — and making things even more bizarre, their numbers include Pennywise the Clown from “It” and the murderous, rapist gang known as the Droogs from “A Clockwork Orange.” Who in the name of Bugs Bunny thought this was a good idea?
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Jul 15, 2021
Debates over LeBron James' greatness compared to Michael Jordan on a basketball court will continue in perpetuity, but "Space Jam: A New Legacy" won't fuel much chatter about who's the better actor. Putting James in Jordan's shoes, as it were, isn't a bad idea in theory, but despite the odd moment of inspired Looney Tune-acy, this reboot shoots a very loud and thudding airball.
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Jul 14, 2021
The GuardianJul 14, 2021
The core issues of the film – its numbing swirls of rainbow light popping out every which way, the excruciating pop-culture catchphrases passed off as humor, LeBron’s stilted, if game, acting, the half-assedness with which it delivers the dusty moral to be yourself, the fact that it is unaccountably one half-hour longer than its predecessor – all seem minor in comparison with the insidious ulterior intentions that power this fandom dynamo.
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