Review: 'Space Jam: A New Legacy' is a cynical cash grab, putting brand awareness ahead of doing anything funny

It’s when LeBron James, basketball icon, becomes a cartoon and hits the ground like Wile E. Coyote that “Space Jam: A New Legacy” reveals what kind of movie it intends to be.

Up to that point — in this re-imagining of the 1996 animated/live-action hybrid that paired that era’s NBA superstar, Michael Jordan, with Bugs Bunny — the movie sets us up for a fast-moving, visually chaotic but narratively predictable story about LeBron and his son, Dom (Cedric Joe), getting sucked into the “ServerVerse” at the Warner Bros. studios. This computer world is run by the villain, a program called Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle, giving his all in a thankless part), who tells LeBron he can get his son back if he can recruit a basketball team from all the Warner Bros. intellectual property at hand, and defeat Al G.’s team in a match.

So Al G. sends LeBron to Tune World — passing the Harry Potter world, the “Game of Thrones” world and “The Matrix” world on the way — and is transformed, briefly, into a 2-D cartoon. He lands on Tune World with a familiar Looney Tunes thud, and when the dust clears, LeBron is climbing out of the hole he created with his impact.

OK, here’s where the movie reveals itself: The hole is shaped like the Nike swoosh.

With that humorless, corporate-driven attempt at a visual gag, “Space Jam: A New Legacy” shows itself not as entertainment, but as a cash grab — and Warner Bros., when it’s not hyping its own trademarks, lets the sneaker company LeBron represents have a turn at the money spigot.

Director Malcolm D. Lee (“Girls Trip,” “Night School”) and the film’s six credited screenwriters try to muster up the bare bones of a plot, involving LeBron’s tough-love efforts to get Dom to practice his basketball skills — while Dom tries to convince his dad that his real passion is designing video games. The main drama centers on the Big Game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad, coached by Al G., who works overtime to spoil Dom and make the kid turn against his dad.

The movie introduces LeBron to the Looney Tunes characters by re-enacting classic bits from the old cartoons, such as the classic “Rabbit season!”/“Duck season!” posters that summon Bugs — putting nostalgic familiarity in the place of something genuinely clever. Other characters are found among other WB properties, with Yosemite Sam playing the piano in “Casablanca,” Speedy Gonzales performing the bullet-time moves from “The Matrix,” and so on. The only one of these that actually pays off is a smartly animated sequence in which Lola Bunny (voiced by Zendaya) completes her Amazon training in a “Wonder Woman” comic book.

The attempts at humor are either labored sight gags referencing movies, rap lyrics, and random memes. It’s one thing that six writers couldn’t come up with something funny for humans, even funny humans like Sarah Silverman and Lil Rey Howery, is sad. To put the Looney Tunes characters on the screen without anything funny to say is downright criminal.

In the end, “Space Jam: A New Legacy” isn’t here to reboot the Looney Tunes franchise; those characters are old hat in the current entertainment-industrial complex. This is an audiovisual presentation at the Warner Bros. shareholders’ meeting, a big-screen catalog of corporate-owned brands — both family friendly and, like “The Matrix” and “Game of Thrones,” definitely not — to remind the suits what titles could be making them money.

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‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’

★1/2

Opens Friday, July 16, in theaters and on HBO Max. Rated PG for some cartoon violence and some language. Running time: 115 minutes.