Malcolm D. Lee
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As was the case with the fondly remembered (by some) but quite mediocre “Space Jam” from 1996, the spiritual sequel isn’t so much a movie as it is a product placement mashup utilizing the technology of the day to combine live action with animation, with a slow buildup to a climactic hoops contest that lasts longer than the final minutes of an NBA playoff game.
The learning-to-be-a-better-parent theme means "A New Legacy" requires more acting from James than the original "Space Jam" did from Michael Jordan.
It took 25 years for Warner Bros. to get around to making a sequel to their blockbuster hit Space Jam (1996), the live-action/animation hybrid that teamed a squad of Looney Tunes with basketball superstar Michael Jordan.
At one point in the film, which bears, um, certain similarities to “Space Jam,” the 1996 film starring Michael Jordan and a bevy of Looney Tunes characters, LeBron James is explaining the situation to Bugs Bunny (voice of Jeff Bergman).
When it comes to bringing the Looney Tunes back together, Space Jam: A New Legacy does admittedly demonstrate a desire to get playfully fun, briefly taking the characters inside scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road, The Matrix, and a few others with inspired results (Foghorn Leghorn also hilariously recites a Game of Thrones catchphrase).
There are nods to The Wizard of Oz , Casablanca , A Clockwork Orange , King Kong , The Matrix , and Mad Max: Fury Road , among many others.
But so much of the film, directed by Malcolm D. Lee and credited to six screenwriters, functions as brand management, depicting a dazzling cinematic theme park filled with WB’s best-known titles (Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, The Matrix, even Casablanca) in an effort to equal the cultural ubiquity of rival studio Disney.
For no particular reason other than it happened in the first movie, James winds up meeting Bugs Bunny, who insists on slyly overriding his new friend’s more powerful recruitment suggestions (Superman, Trinity from The Matrix , et. al) in favor of gathering up the scattered Looney Tunes—who, you will recall, are a famously warm, supportive, and basketball-loving surrogate family.
We get callbacks and Easter Eggs from the likes of Casablanca (1942) to The Matrix (1999).
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Directed by Jay Roach
influenced Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021), Undercover Brother (2002)
Themes
Kids won’t get the nods to Austin Powers (1997), and their parents won’t care.
In any case, the movie then gives itself endless free throws of references to actual WB titles, including Casablanca, Game of Thrones, The Matrix, Superman, Mad Max and Austin Powers .
One is for Warner Bros.: The studio ostentatiously flips through its library of properties throughout the film, most notably in a series of brief clips of James gathering Tunes who have relocated to The Matrix and Austin Powers and, most distressingly, Casablanca .
Not being familiar with Ridley's original Internet work, I can't state whether the rip-off started back then, but the fact that the film's other screenwriter, Michael McCullers, also co-penned the second and third "Austin Powers" films gives one the impression that he may have had a little more than something to do with the rather obvious similarities.
Or at least, a little different from the Austin Powers films.
You can tell that writer John Ridley enlisted the help of Austin Powers scribe Michael McCullers for the screenplay of Undercover Brother.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Directed by George Miller
influenced Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
Visuals
When it comes to bringing the Looney Tunes back together, Space Jam: A New Legacy does admittedly demonstrate a desire to get playfully fun, briefly taking the characters inside scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road, The Matrix, and a few others with inspired results (Foghorn Leghorn also hilariously recites a Game of Thrones catchphrase).
There are nods to The Wizard of Oz , Casablanca , A Clockwork Orange , King Kong , The Matrix , and Mad Max: Fury Road , among many others.
Everything from Mad Max: Fury Road and Rick and Morty to Austin Powers and Harry Potter get playful — and occasionally really clever, in the case of Fury Road — nods and call-outs in James’ adventure through the WB servers.
Director Malcolm D. Lee ("Girls Trip") does his best to dodge the conceptual pitfalls, finding a few giggles when Wile E. Coyote joins a chase scene from "Mad Max: Fury Road."
The pair race through the ServerVerse together in Marvin the Martian’s flying saucer, visiting DC superheroes like Batman and Wonder Woman, stopping for Matrix slow-motion bullet gags and a Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) sketch with Wile E. Coyote, all while busily collecting the other ‘toons.
Before that, LeBron and Bugs have to get their Tune Squad together, so they enter famous scenes in an array of Warner Bros. movies and TV shows to recruit familiar personalities: Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner hanging with War Boys in “Mad Max: Fury Road” makes sense, Foghorn Leghorn riding a “Game of Thrones” dragon, not so much.
It houses its smarts in a vehicle that borrows scenes and style from movies as diverse as Billy Dee's own Hit, Jack Hill's Coffy and Foxy Brown, Shaft (of course), Bare Knuckles, and Jim Kelly's kung fu sagas--especially Black Belt Jones and Enter the Dragon, from which a Kelly sequence appears on a television set at one point in Undercover Brother.
It houses its smarts in a vehicle that borrows scenes and style from movies as diverse as Billy Dee's own Hit, Jack Hill's Coffy and Foxy Brown, Shaft (of course), Bare Knuckles, and Jim Kelly's kung fu sagas--especially Black Belt Jones and Enter the Dragon, from which a Kelly sequence appears on a television set at one point in Undercover Brother.
It houses its smarts in a vehicle that borrows scenes and style from movies as diverse as Billy Dee's own Hit, Jack Hill's Coffy and Foxy Brown, Shaft (of course), Bare Knuckles, and Jim Kelly's kung fu sagas--especially Black Belt Jones and Enter the Dragon, from which a Kelly sequence appears on a television set at one point in Undercover Brother.
It houses its smarts in a vehicle that borrows scenes and style from movies as diverse as Billy Dee's own Hit, Jack Hill's Coffy and Foxy Brown, Shaft (of course), Bare Knuckles, and Jim Kelly's kung fu sagas--especially Black Belt Jones and Enter the Dragon, from which a Kelly sequence appears on a television set at one point in Undercover Brother.
A silly, amusing and occasionally rather funny spoof of "blaxploitation" films of the 1970s (such as "Shaft" and "Superfly") as mixed with James Bond, the picture will obviously draw inevitable comparisons to the Austin Powers character and movies.
June 4, 2002 -- "Undercover Brother" is an effective spoof of films of the 1970s like "Shaft," the James Bond films, kung-fu films and others.
Everyone from Pennywise to the nuns from Ken Russell’s “The Devils” show up.
For whatever it’s worth, New Legacy will be the only 2021 movie to feature The Mask, Austin Powers, Jabberjaw, a nun from Ken Russell’s The Devils, Superman, and Foghorn Leghorn.
As onlookers emerge from the hills, the stands begin to overflow with a generation’s worth of Warner Brothers’ characters — including Jane Hudson from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Alex’s droogs from A Clockwork Orange, and, for some reason, the nuns from Ken Russell’s The Devils.
Think: Girls Trip , Bachelorette , or another Netflix release, Ibiza .
Hot on the heels of “Girls Trip” and “Rough Night” comes “Someone Great,” Netflix’s contribution to the “girls’ night out” genre.
Since then, female audiences haven’t had much to hang onto except for “Girls Trip” in 2017.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Directed by Robert Aldrich
influenced Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
As onlookers emerge from the hills, the stands begin to overflow with a generation’s worth of Warner Brothers’ characters — including Jane Hudson from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Alex’s droogs from A Clockwork Orange, and, for some reason, the nuns from Ken Russell’s The Devils.
The highest compliment I can give Awkwafina is that her performance is akin to Tiffany Haddish’s in Girls Trip (sans the raunch).
The past five years or so have seen studios finally pulling their finger out when it comes to putting money behind movies with casts that are predominantly non-white and there has been a lot of focus on the success of movies with largely black casts — Black Panther , Girls Trip , Straight Outta Compton , etc. Crazy Rich Asians is a statement that diversity means a whole range of ethnicities and experiences, and everyone should be included.
Tinsel Town executives had their collective edges snatched by the $1 billion+ performance of Black Panther and $140 million+ showing of Girls Trip earlier this year, both led by majority Black casts.
And rapper Awkwafina gets the best lines and steals scenes in the same way that Tiffany Haddish did in Girls Trip.
At one point, in the crowd of the big game, you see the Penguin’s nightmare-clown cronies — as in, from Batman Returns — alongside Pennywise the actual nightmare Clown, and White Walkers from Game of Thrones, and I’m positive I spotted one of the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz.
Ready Player One (2018)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
Plot Themes
Once James gets hurled into ‘Tune Town’ with the so-called rejects, Space Jam: A New Legacy goes full-blown Ready Player One (2018), with the NBA star and Bugs Bunny teaming up to track down all the other Looney Tunes characters, who’ve been scattered across the ServerVerse.
Anyone who found fellow IP-extravaganza Ready Player One (2018) a soulless exercise in nostalgia will be even more depressed by what this kids movie does to characters they love, as well as baffled by the presence of ones they never cared about in the first place.
Pig looks like Casablanca next to Space Jam: A New Legacy , an uninspired mashup of Looney Toons and Steven Spielberg’s Hook and Ready Player One , enacted by an NBA legend who can’t act (LeBron James, natch), and which was likely written and possibly even made by an algorithm — maybe even the one played by an overqualified Don Cheadle.
The character inspiration seems to be the age old Stand and Deliver / Dead Poets Society inspirational teacher archetype when through a comedic lens.
Her oddball students are more “Bad News Bears” than “Dead Poets Society.”
I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans
influenced Undercover Brother (2002)
Themes
In addition, Keenen Ivory Wayans pretty much tapped the subject in his 1988 spoof, "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka."
Sex and the City (2008)
Directed by Michael Patrick King
influenced Girls Trip (2017)
Themes Characters Plot
While “ Bridesmaids ” and the “ Sex and the City ” franchise might have redefined such bosom-buddy bonding while trafficking in the usual raunchy, rude and rowdy behavior, “Girls Trip,” with its epic two-hour length, apparently aims to be the “Lord of the Rings” of sisters doing it for themselves, one that gets a whole lot right that the others too often get wrong.
Seven years ago, male and female critics alike got their claws out to destroy Sex and the City 2, a film which they suggested celebrated excess, debauchery, immorality, and all the qualities they had admired the Golden Globe-winning The Hangover for.
Like liberated “Sex and the City” types, these ladies represent different facets of the female experience, from divorced single mom Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) to the aggressively sexual Dina (scene-stealing newcomer Tiffany Haddish ).
The story of four middle-aged female friends on a boozy, lecherous weekend in New Orleans, it pitches itself somewhere between Sex and the City and Bridesmaids, but provides neither the breezy insights of the former nor the ribald laughs of the latter.
Coyote vs. Acme (2026)
Directed by Dave Green
influenced by Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
Themes Visuals
The Looney Tunes have crossed the border into reality before, from the underrated Looney Tunes: Back In Action, to the nostalgic miasma of Space Jam (and its even more fetid sequel).
As appalling as Warner Bros.’ wastefulness is, their rationale stemmed from the dismal box office performance of Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021), which returned just $163.7M against a $150M production budget (before marketing costs).
The fact that Warner Bros. released the miserable Space Jam: A New Legacy in theaters and on streaming…
The last Looney Tunes vehicle, the utterly disastrous (on every level) “Space Jam: A New Legacy” was five years ago…
And it’s not like the Looney Tunes couldn’t have been in 2D, especially when Bugs Bunny, showing up as a mysterious informant, appears in all his hand-drawn glory, as if he personally told the studio they weren’t going to 3D character-model him again after Space Jam: A New Legacy.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
Directed by Melvin Van Peebles
influenced Undercover Brother (2002)
Visuals
The jokes are hit-or-miss and Lee has a difficult time marrying the Austin Powers and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song color palettes into one singular aesthetic, but it’s impossible to fault a film with ideas this big.