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SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY is the fucking worst

Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse

I don’t know if I believe that a young LeBron James wore a Looney Tunes backpack in 1998. He was 14 then, on top of which those images of Bugs, Wile E. Coyote, and the Tasmanian Devil setting aside their differences in order to dress in contemporary clothing, fold their arms, and stare sardonically out from various mall apparel predated the 1996 release of Space Jam, a project that felt a little bit like That Bugs & Taz Shirt: The Movie (though it was, in reality, That Sneaker Commercial: The Movie). But for a moment in Space Jam: A New Legacy, I felt a little rush of, well, if not personal nostalgia, a pleasurable recognition of something I remembered from real life, not just television. My relationship with Space Jam has ranged from tolerance to irritation over the years, but I can recognize that a lot of people enjoyed seeing a movie starring the Looney Tunes (as well as what appeared to be an animatronic simulation of basketball sensation Michael Jordan) on the big screen. Who am I to disdain a Looney Tunes backpack? It’s scarcely less commercialized than the Looney Tunes PVC figurines I collected as a kid, or the Warner Bros. Studio Store where I excitedly spent the $50 bill I found on the ground when I was 10. I’m not immune to the stupid pleasures of commerce running roughshod over art, having also spent some time as a child getting past the LOL phase of my Looney Tunes appreciation and moved, with nerdy precision, into the cataloging and memorization.

This is all to say that Space Jam: A New Legacy is not as interesting as a backpack where Bugs and Taz are friends and don vaguely hip-hop-inspired streetwear. Backpacks usually have stuff inside of them. Though originally intended for theaters, Space Jam: A New Legacy has an emptiness that seems custom-built for streaming: vaporous, worthless, yet somehow nearly two hours long. That hideous blue-and-white Warner Bros. shield that looks like a specialty logo for a DTV outfit called Warner Faith should have been debuted with this movie. It is a temple of content, which the filmmakers can only visualize as a knockoff of Ralph Breaks the Internet taped over by an unwatchable family sitcom starring LeBron James.
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