It's very clear this movie is aimed at millennials: people who grew up watching, not just the original Space Jam, but also DC super-hero shows & movies, The Matrix, Harry Potter, and (more recently) Game Of Thrones. All of theses, along with various other things cameo heavily throughout the movie. They've decided to take a very different approach to the last movie, leveraging any & every WB-owned property, in a very "Ready Player One"-style. In fact, this whole movie is arguably "Ready Player One, but make it LeBron James".

Which is especially disappointing when Lebron comes across as such an unlikeable, unsympathetic character for most of the movie. According to this, when he was a kid, he has a coach who told him that he needed to focus on basketball more, and take it more seriously, and he's lived by that and nothing else ever since. He spends most of the movie ignoring the feeling and directly expressed wishes of basically everyone around him. This lead to him alienating his son, who run into the arms of the villain, and inhibiting the Tunes from doing their thing, which is exactly how they won last time. If this movie is to be believed, Lebron James is a bad father who only cares about basketball and doesn't like fun. He even explicitly says that basketball isn't fun: it's work.

Of course, the revelation of the movie comes when he decides to loosen up, but it ends up feeling so hollow. LeBron just isn't that good at being Looney. He looks stiff and goofy, trying to play along with the Tunes, most of which feel off anyway. Elmer Fudd is played more like Mr Magoo than a hunter, and Yosemite Sam seems to only be here so they can repeat that same "shoot the ball" joke from the original movie. Porky Pig also seems wrong somehow. I don't mind him spitting bars, but all the other words out of his mouth don't land right.

And yet, despite all that, I somehow enjoyed it. Maybe it's just residual joy from the original. Maybe I'm a sucker for all the references and meta-jokes. But I still sort of liked it. **But the original was better.**