“Gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” – Galatians 5:23
Idk, I’m not religious, but it sure feels like that line was made to prophesies Space Jam 2: A New Legacy breaking all order for the human race, huh?
You know what? I have no doubt that A.I. has the potential to write better movies than us in the future, but if Space Jam 2: A New Legacy proves anything, it’s that we’re currently living in its developmental stage where if it were to be used in the mainstream, it would be *wrongly* used to draw in tickets rather than to break creative boundaries. It’s kind of sad that even for something following up what I’d call an overrated cult phenomena which already reeked a bit of corporate gimmick to begin with, it had to be the one and only offering generated first from what appears to be some sort of algorithmic machine that manages to calculate up a whole two-hour CRIB TOUR of everything Warner Bros. owns while maintaining it within the confines of their 150-million dollar budget, analyzing each property for if their investment would be worth it in regards to current audience recognizability or whatever other nostalgic fish-bate deviancy they were going for with this steroid of a product. I mean, the amount of DC referencing here says it all.
The best way I can describe this movie is that it’s essentially a two hour conga line that wants to add on a random quick joke or pop culture reference to its back at least every five seconds, but the overbearingness of how much information that requires is ultimately forcing the presumed army of desk job workers (or A.I. bots) to write them all on the spot in whatever constrained time frame they were given to finish everything, and on top of that, were also forced to conspire loopholes that could interweave an actual story into this back and forth mania with themes, plot or character revelations which felt, again, as if they were pressured to be thought up of “on the spot”, no matter the cost of how convenient, cheesy, or ridiculous every single one of them ended up being. Yep, every single one.
So in hindsight, all this movie did for me was just reaffirm that in defiance of even my own ADHD issues, I still manage to have boomer-tendencies because of how frustrated I was with the possible swiftness that a movie’s agenda could get. Godspeed, Warner Bros., and pay your animators extra for wasting their very apparent talent.
The Come and See (1985) cameo was pretty lit though.
Verdict: D-
“Space Jam 2: A New Legacy” is now playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
Burning the Celluloid 
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