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The Iron Claw (2023)
The true story of a wrestling family that was beset by so much tragedy it might as well be a lost Shakespearean drama. The Iron Claw follows the Von Erich brothers, lead by oldest brother Kevin (Zac Efron). They’re all competing for their father’s approval, the same man who gives them updated son rankings at the breakfast table. Kevin and his three brothers (Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Stanley Simons) are living out their old man’s dream of being a professional wrestler of significant renown, and the appeal of the brothers is as a fighting family of wrestlers rather than as single entities. In essence, they don’t seem to matter unless as a collective. This leads to plenty of misguided attempts to curry favor with their toxic parent and a pile-up of tragedies that would be absurd if it wasn’t actually true. The issue for me was that I didn’t see the other brothers as fully dimensional characters, and side stories like Kevin’s romantic escapades felt lacking as illumination. It felt for much of its running time like a good movie but one going about its business with a little too much expediency. I was interested but felt like the brothers were more reflections on Kevin than their own separate characters. However, the film’s last twenty minutes are by far the best part and finally find a way to elevate the drama as well as better personalize it through Kevin’s grief and survivor’s guilt. “It’s okay dad, we’ll be your brothers,” spoken with the innocent yearning of a child, pretty much broke me and caused me to sob. If you’re a fan of 1980s professional wrestling, or meaty dramas about the suffering of strong men from strong men, I’m here to assure you that it’s okay to cry here. The Iron Claw is a fine drama that comes together by its end for an off-the-ropes wallop, and the lingering sadness is one that will be hard to shake for hours.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Lady Ballers (2023)
Conservative commentator Ben “Debate me!” Shapiro is not the first name you would think of with comedy, at least not intentional humor. His outlet The Daily Wire has begun producing and releasing its own movies, starring the likes of Gina Carano and and Some White Lady as Snow White in their Snow White movie that exists solely because Disney had the temerity to hire a diverse woman to play a fairy tale character. I reviewed 2022’s Shut In, the Daily Wire’s low-budget-friendly contained thriller, and was surprised that much of it worked as a straightforward drama. It’s not enough to get me to watch their school shooting thriller, Run Hide Fight. Next up is one of the worst movies of 2023, Lady Ballers, a sports comedy built upon the idiotic premise that a washed-up high school basketball coach (writer/director Jeremy Boreing) can gather his former male athletes and compete on a newly accepted stage. They will disguise themselves, wearing dresses and wigs though not bothering to shave their beards, and call themselves trans women and waltz to money and glory.
The central joke of Lady Ballers is a mean-spirited perspective deeming trans rights to be little more than a calculated media sideshow of accruing social woke points. To say this movie is transphobic goes without saying and from people who don’t deserve any misspent assumptions of good faith about “starting a dialogue.” In this world, trans people are a confused liberal scam, something that can be solved by kicking a guy who says he thinks he’s a girl in the balls and telling him to get over it. The movie feels like a proverbial kick to the balls for all genders.
Just think about the nature of comedy being one of subversion, of zigging rather than zagging, and the failings of Lady Ballers become even more magnified and odious. The most obvious joke would be these out-of-shape former athletes thinking they could simply throw on dresses and trounce the competition only to find that these women aren’t just good, they’re far better. This would force the characters to reassess their wrong-headed beliefs and learn lessons about being humble, empathetic, and open-minded. But naturally that’s not the worldview that Lady Ballers and The Daily Wire want to reinforce (it’s sad that “empathy” is not a universal goal) because their audience isn’t coming to this movie with a desire to rethink transphobia or gender-based assumptions and general sexism levied against female athletes. They’re coming to have their “anti-woke” feelings coddled and sexist notions soothingly reconfirmed (“Turns out white male of non-exotic sexuality is the only group not being cast by Hollywood these days” – you sure about that?). Because of this starting point, the attempts at comedy don’t really work because it’s forgoing subversion and surprises of the status quo, and continuously punching down, making fun of even recognizing the humanity of trans people or that they simply even exist.
For the reported defenders of women’s sports, the entire premise of Lady Ballers is deeply sexist. The film posits that any man, no matter how out of shape, could competitively destroy a woman in sports. It’s a laughably misguided assertion, bringing to mind a 2019 survey that found 1-in-8 men thought they could win a point in tennis against Serena Williams. The idea that anyone with little experience could contend or even dominate against a female professional athlete who has devoted her life to improving her physical prowess is built on pure misogyny, the notion that men have to be superior to women no matter the context. “Soon all the best women will be men,” says the conniving and morally bankrupt journalist. The filmmakers, and numerous politicians who have become obsessed with policing the genitals of student athletes, style themselves as the defenders of women when they couldn’t care less about women’s sports, and Lady Ballers even makes this very observation as a bad joke, giving the phony advocacy game away. One character responds to the question of what makes a woman a woman with, “They’re just like men, only better. Just shave your legs, tell each other how brave you are for things that require absolutely no physical courage, and don’t be afraid to cry at work.” There’s a montage of the guys attempting all these other sports and instantly dominating all women. Are you sure you don’t actually really despise women, Lady Ballers? That’s what it looks like here. The film’s entire premise is built upon the dumb concept of male superiority regardless of circumstance. You can’t fashion yourself the protector of women while also thinking they must be inherently inferior.
There are so many scattered conservative straw man send-ups that Lady Ballers becomes an unintentionally fascinating profile of what agitates conservative media at the moment, or at least what agitates their easily agitated audience that they’re catering to, whether or not they genuinely believe in the horrors of what they’re stoking and selling. There are jokes about touchy-feely out-of-touch liberals just wanting to resolve matters with hugs. There are jokes about journalists being wholly untrustworthy and callously taking advantage of multiple abortions. There are jokes about evil school teachers indoctrinating students. There are jokes about black teens being untrustworthy criminals who will steal from you. There are jokes about space lasers followed by jokes about Jewish military. There are jokes about considering the MRNA vaccine as part of one’s regular diet, which doesn’t remotely make sense. There are several conservative cameos like Ted Cruz, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, and even Shapiro himself that will go over most viewer’s heads, as will references to things like Dylan Mulvaney and Riley Gaines, the woman who tragically finished in fifth place in a swim meet instead of fourth because of a trans athlete. Late in the film, the coach comes to see women as being better caregivers and communicators, and while we’re meant to celebrate his widening perspective, it’s still a window into where the conservative audience easily stoked for this movie thinks that the real important values of women lie, namely putting up with men and making them better people.
And yet, despite myself, I could at least recognize a few passing jokes that kind of work on their own, if you can remove the morally repugnant context of the movie’s aims. Early in the movie, as we’re establishing the teammates as high school athletes, two players are fighting and one responds curtly with, “Your mom’s a catch!” to which the other player adds, “She’s your mom too!” In the same scene, the players plead for the coach to inspire them, and he shrugs and says, “I already threw three chairs on the sidelines, pal, I don’t know what else you want from me.” I think I actually chuckled at that line. The ongoing character definition of two players being twins from sharing fathers who shared the same mother at the same time is at least something outlandishly memorable at the expense of its dumb characters rather than a group of people. One character’s psychotic obsession against badgers based upon his high school mascot has some potential and makes for some weird asides that, at least, don’t make fun of trans people. I even kind of like the simplistic sports chant “winners are just losers who win” as a reflexive joke. When the evil yet sexually voracious journalist lady, who has been engaging in an affair with our coach, slaps him hard, she adds the helpful aside, “These are not sexy slaps.” The concluding game involves inviting little girls to take the place of our scheming men, and it’s played as a heartwarming act of valuing sportsmanship, and then the newscasters reveal the little girls lost by 400 points, not because they’re girls but because it was children versus grown adults. It’s as if someone who at least had a passing understanding of some comedy punched up some of these lines and situations, which makes the rest of Lady Ballers that much more embarrassing.
However, is finding tiny slivers of comedic merit a critical fool’s errand considering the despicable worldview and disingenuous intent of Lady Ballers? I’m reminded of all the film historians and academics that praised the technical merits and storytelling methods of Leni Riefenstahl’s anti-semitic “documentary” Triumph of the Will or D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. Maybe you can objectively analyze Griffith’s use of zooms and cross-cutting and modern storytelling techniques in his 1915 silent era blockbuster, or you could examine the deplorable racism and the fact that the movie served as a rebirth for the KKK’s membership and a new era in segregationist terrorism. It all depends on the individual viewer and their tolerance for overlooking offense, but it’s hard for me to venerate well-designed or executed pieces of a diseased whole. This is not to say Lady Ballers is on the same filmmaking wavelength as Griffith or Riefenstahl; it’s a dumb sports comedy that wishes it was a second-rate Zucker-Abrahams movie. The bar is considerably low, infinitesimally low for this movie considering its target audience and targets, and yet this movie trips over even the mildest of expectations. Lady Ballers only confirms that a comedy made by people who don’t understand comedy can only ever be limited in its funny, especially when its built upon a premise radiating seething ignorance.
Nate’s Grade: D
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Alternate Opinion: Lady Ballers Guest Essay
My friend and writing partner Ben Bailey asked me to host an extensive essay he was compelled to write after watching Ben Shapiro’s deeply disingenuous and presumably laugh-free sports comedy, Lady Ballers, a movie built upon not just transphobia but also misogyny. I plan on watching this movie as well because of course it will be one of the worst movies of the year and thus I’ll need to analyze these things for you to spare you, dear reader. In the mean time, enjoy Ben’s monumental take-down on the movie, its terms and goals, and the disingenuous nature of the toxic conservative media ecosystem.
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“Trigger Warning: A Woke Soy Cuck is About to Talk About Lady Ballers“
By Ben Bailey
So, Lady Ballers is a thing. If you haven’t heard of it, or of Ben Shapiro’s right wing Daily Wire production company, I envy your life and your ability to avoid psychic pain. For the rest of you, maybe you’ve seen the trailer or some reaction videos on YouTube, and then you likely did what most rational people would do and casually dismissed it as something you will never have any reason to watch. At least I assume most people will never watch Lady Ballers because most people don’t have a subscription to Daily Wire+ or the wherewithal to actively seek it out through other quasi-legal means, but I watched it, and if only to justify the effort of doing so, I decided to commandeer my good friend’s blog for a bit to talk about it. You should know that I insisted he watch it, because even though I cited him as a friend just now, I secretly hate him and only want bad things for him.
Lady Ballers is the story of the whitest basketball team you’ve ever seen in your life deciding to take advantage of our modern “woke obsession” with regarding trans people as human beings with basic dignity by pretending to identify as women so that they can compete in women’s sports, where they will obviously dominate due to their manly testosterone being the natural kryptonite to weak lady estrogen. If you are as exhausted reading that synopsis as I became writing it, rest assured that the rest of this isn’t actually going to be much of a traditional review of the film on its cinematic merits, because that would be completely pointless. If you’ve seen the trailer and know anything about the people who made it, you already know it’s bad. It’s not funny, its amateurish and just generally poorly made, because it was made by unfunny amateurs who don’t know how to make anything good. I will touch on quality issues here and there, but mostly I want to focus on what the film represents in the larger cultural and political context in which it is being presented. What is the point of Lady Ballers, and what does its form and function say about the bigots behind it and the zeitgeist they so desperately wish to influence?
I also want to stress at the outset that the level of critical analysis I am about to apply to Lady Ballers should not be seen as any attempt to elevate it to the level of art worth engaging with or expanding any intellectual strain to deconstruct. Just by talking about this movie, or even calling this loose assortment of tired hate-filled nonsense a movie, might leave the erroneous impression that Lady Ballers is, in any way, inherently interesting. It is not. It is in fact, beyond the novelty of its miserably cynical polemic, a very boring thing that I would defy most people not already tuned into its disgusting message to even sit through (and frankly I bet most of its target audience would find it difficult as well).
Let’s start with Ben Shapiro, the public face of the Daily Wire brand, who appears briefly in a cameo as a referee at one of the games to deliver a line that unintentionally reveals more about him and this movie than anything else in it, flatly stating that he’s just getting paid to be here and doesn’t actually care about anything going on. Ben Shapiro is a grifter, and almost certainly a bad person who probably believes a lot of terrible things about people, but I say probably because you can never be sure with someone like Ben if he actually believes anything he says or is just saying what he needs to say to appeal to an audience of people as bad as he is presenting himself to be. The science is not yet in on whether he is biologically a piece of shit, but he clearly identifies as one, and just as he seems to regard trans identification according to his film, he’s only doing it for the clout and the money. Whether or not Shapiro actually believes any of his own hate-filled rhetoric is immaterial to his main goal, which is raking in money from the suckers in his audience who very much do believe it, and the reason we know this for sure, is because he just made a movie called Lady Ballers.
You see, in a recent interview about the movie on his website, Shapiro revealed that the original intention for Lady Ballers was not creating a kind of dumb, raunchy, shocking for its own sake comedy that he would almost certainly hate if he hadn’t made it himself, but rather, a hard-hitting documentary focusing on his favorite fake culture war controversy. The plan was to have cis-gendered men actually pretend to identify as women in order to infiltrate women’s sports for real and prove that all the so-called trans-women currently doing it were just liars like them trying to get a hairy leg up on the competition. The problem apparently became immediately obvious when they found that the standards for applying to women’s sports as trans-women were much higher than any of their stooges were willing to meet, as they weren’t ready to undergo the hormone treatments, surgeries, and other little details required to prove that they weren’t just a bunch of assholes trying to co-opt something they don’t care about in order to score political points with MAGA douchebags. You get it, right? It’s the one legitimately fascinating thing about Lady Ballers, that its very existence in its current form invalidates its entire thematic premise. They had to make a fictional “comedy” version of the story they wanted to tell because it was impossible to present the thing they claim to believe is actually true in any way that could qualify as a documentary even by their incredibly low standards. As Shapiro is fond of saying, facts don’t care about feelings, and in this case, that appears to be true.
But of course, that didn’t stop them, so they went ahead and made Lady Ballers, and I could go on for quite a while listing off all the transphobia and misogyny and racism awash in it, as well as all the stuff that wasn’t deliberately objectionable but still offensively unfunny, but again, what would be the point? More interesting to me is what this movie says about the people who made it and the audience it is targeting and what the perceived existence and marketability of that audience says about us as a country and a species. I always felt that the rise of Donald Trump was less about him than it was about us, that whether he won or lost, or wins again or loses again in 2024, it would be a test of our own moral character for us to pass or fail. Do we accept that this is who we are, or do we actually try to live up to what we all want to believe are our better selves? The vitriol intrinsic to Lady Ballers and the Daily Wire and this whole movement of stoking anti-trans hatred to rile up bigots, ultimately in the hope of pushing them to the polls to support a fascist overthrow of our democracy, just seems to me to be another facet of that test, and how close we are to passing or failing it is the only question worth thinking about.
For a movie supposedly about the topic of trans-people in sports, it is a bit surprising that this movie doesn’t actually feature any depictions of real trans-people in it. Obviously, I wasn’t expecting any portrayal to be positive, but I at least expected there to be a trans-character, if only to take the role of a villain or antagonist representing the thing the movie is railing against. We have the aforementioned cis-men pretending to be trans but otherwise no one who genuinely considers themselves to be trans. Even if you dismiss the authenticity of trans identification and say they just wrongly believe something about their gender, you’d think they would show someone like that in their own movie, right? There’s a brief bit at the end where a character suggests they might be, but only as a quick throwaway ball-kicking joke. If trans people are the bad guys in real life, why are they not the bad guys in this movie that wants you to come away thinking that they are so bad?
More to the point, why are there no trans conservatives in the movie? I know there aren’t that many, but off the top of my head I can think of at least two public examples. Maybe Caitlin Jenner was too big a get for this and just saying that the vaunted star of Can’t Stop The Music, Jack and Jill, and literally no other movies is too good for this is saying something, but what about Blair White? Pretty sure she’s been on the Daily Wire a couple of times, but apparently, they couldn’t get her to show up to provide any kind of cover for the transphobic message. That’s literally what she does for a living, being the trans person willing to sell out her own people for conservative clout, and either they didn’t want her in this for some reason, or even she turned them down. Blair White agreed to appear in a Tom MacDonald music video but turned down Lady Ballers?
That can’t be it. It’s not possible that they even asked them, or ever considered including any trans-people, even as imaginary straw-women to make fun of them, because that would require acknowledging that they are actual people who exist. As the film’s mid-credit stinger suggests, depicting one of the main characters attending Jordan Peterson’s reparative therapy to cure their trans-delusions, for this movie and the ideology behind it to make any sense, trans-people can’t exist, and anyone claiming to be trans is either mentally ill or pulling the same scam as the film’s protagonists. If Jenner had shown up, sure she may have parroted the talking points about keeping sports segregated by the gender binary, but she would have presumably done so with the confidence of a person who clearly believes that they have the right to exist as they are without being accused of being crazy or a liar, which would go against the movie’s larger message that trans-people aren’t just illegitimate as players in sport but illegitimate as people in general. The people behind Lady Ballers are grifters who don’t believe anything, so naturally they assume that everyone else is too, and that includes trans-people, who don’t actually believe what they say about themselves, and are merely grifting a gullible public, just like the Daily Wire is doing.
Designed to work in tandem with freak-outs about Drag Queen Story Hours grooming your kids and doctors prescribing hormone blockers to babies without their consent, the faux controversy about trans-people in sports has always been a thinly-veiled cover for the larger goal of trans erasure, a way to launder openly genocidal rhetoric designed to inspire the very kind of deadly violence against trans-people we’ve seen increase in the last few years as if it were just some completely legitimate concern for the integrity of women’s sports. But Lady Ballers is so blunt and bad at its own messaging that it fails to hide what it needs to hide, giving away the game, no pun intended. Obviously, these people don’t genuinely care about women’s sports; a major running gag in the movie is about how literally no one cares about women’s sports, and the central premise of the movie assumes that any man, regardless of skill, is inherently physically superior to every woman and could beat any women at any sport at any time purely by virtue of being a man.
And I know that sounds like a joke, to the point where you might question my criticizing it in the context of a movie at least intended to be a comedy, but that’s not a joke in this movie. You as the audience are not meant to take the idea that any man is better than all women at all sports as an exaggerated, farcical concept. That is the actual thing you are meant to unironically accept so that the other jokes in the movie work, the underlying rational assumption upon which the other jokes are made relatable. You aren’t meant to laugh at the idea that these men are trouncing these women at the sports the women trained for and the men didn’t, you are meant to laugh at the absurdity that any woman would ever think they could try to go up against any man. A few years ago, there was a poll that found that 1-in-8 men genuinely believed that they could beat Serena Williams in tennis, and this movie was written for them.
If you know who this person is in the picture, I’m sorry.
The virulent misogyny dripping from every corner of Lady Ballers would seem to preclude any genuine regard for the integrity of women’s sports or women in general. The most prominent female character in the film is a conniving reporter colluding with the team’s head coach to cynically milk the “stunning and brave” human interest story for viewers, who casually references her regular abortions as the annoying minor consequence of aggressive promiscuity, you know, the way all women who get abortions do? At one point, one of our “heroes” stares off into the middle distance while spitting out a creepy incel screed sarcastically defining women as just like men but better because they shave their legs, brag about bravery for things that aren’t brave, and aren’t afraid to cry at work, and the next shot is the reporter shrugging and nodding in agreement, as if it was the truest thing ever said and, despite her prior demonstration of assertive hostile feminism, she has absolutely no way to refute it.
Again, you might be saying, these are just jokes. Bad taste jokes, maybe even jokes based on faulty premises that could only be enjoyed by the terrible people who accept those premises, sure, but still, only jokes. But that’s the weird thing about a movie like Lady Ballers that is more preoccupied with its political and cultural message than its service as a functional comedy. The message is not in the service of the comedy, the comedy, such as it is, is in the service of the message. Comedy is about subverting expectations, while cultural polemics are about reaffirming expectations. For instance, if you start your movie with a bunch of characters assuming that simply being men would allow them to dominate women’s sports, one would think the next scene would be them realizing that this was not the case, in a montage of them getting taken down a peg for their sexist hubris. Or you might have an actual trans character presented as a contrast for the absurdity of their fake trans grift. But this movie can’t do any of those things, because to subvert the expectations of its audience of bigoted right-wing morons would defeat the whole point, which is to validate their bigotry and to keep the cash flow coming. The needs of a comedy and the needs of whatever this movie is are diametrically opposed to one another.
Fairly early on in Lady Ballers, before the film’s gender-bending twist, the head coach delivers one of his famously rousing motivational speeches to his team, getting them to chant a motto that will return in the third act: “Winners are just losers who win.” Credit where its due, unlike most of what passes for comedy in the movie, this line at least structurally conforms to be a recognizable joke. It’s not particularly funny or clever, just a superficial rhetorical absurdity, but it also serves as another one of those accidental confessions on the part of the producers. Because if you think about it, losers who win basically describes the Rightwing Influencer Pipeline to which the Daily Wire crew belong.
Also, Ted Cruz cameo.
To the extent that they have won anything, or rather succeeded financially as a grift or culturally as propaganda for a noxious worldview, it has always been with the distinct stench of loser-dom. C.H.U.D.s like Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles speak with all the confidence of people with an actual point, but there’s always this underlying sense that beyond the choir to which they are preaching, the cringe and bluster are obvious to anyone else. When Ben Shapiro tries to own Cardi B and Megan The Stallion’s W.A.P. by questioning whether the titular wetness is a disturbing medical condition, unintentionally revealing to the world that he’s apparently never made his own wife sexually aroused, the self-own, while hilarious, is not even a little surprising. In short, contrary to the utter gob-smacking dearth of actual jokes in their movie, these guys are themselves complete jokes.
And the more important point is that the joke isn’t landing anymore, if it ever did. One need only look to the spectacular failure of Moms For Liberty, a group that tried to ride the wave of transphobia to take local school board elections by storm, only to lose almost every seat they ran for in 2023. If there is any saving grace to Lady Ballers, it is that it decidedly does not feel like the work of people who are or even think they are winning anything. This doesn’t feel like a triumphant victory lap of the Anti-Trans Right, but rather the sad last desperate gasp of a dying movement that was never even a real movement to begin with, the fizzled fart of stale air escaping a punctured basketball, or if you prefer, a balloon used to approximate a fake boob by someone who’s never done drag and didn’t bother to research anything about how to do it right. And that’s good. Not the lack of research but the larger failure of the mission that this movie represents. You still shouldn’t watch it because it sucks.
The thing I’ve always found interesting about Shapiro is that in spite of his horrible takes on everything, he strikes me as someone at least smart and self-aware enough to feel some measure of secret disdain for how his career is dependent upon debasing himself to the kinds of people who boycott M&Ms because the green one isn’t sexy enough anymore. If you didn’t know, he got into the right-wing commentary business after a failed attempt at making it as a screenwriter, and it would seem that the Daily Wire getting into its own film production is at least on some level a way for him to live out the dreams that were robbed of him by his crippling lack of creative talent. I like to think that knowing Lady Ballers is the closest he’s come to the achievement of his lifelong aspirations, and that the actual career he did build for himself is an active impediment to those aspirations trapping him in a cage of his own bullshit from which he can never escape to a land where he is regarded as a legitimate creative person, is the funniest joke of all.
(Addendum: I didn’t have any other place for this, but I did feel I would be disingenuous if I did not mention the one actual good idea in the movie. At one point, the head coach goes to a Hooter’s-esque sports bar but one staffed entirely by men in drag. Of course, in the context of the film this is yet another joke about how men dressed as women are silly and should be dehumanized and presumably executed by the state in the next Trump administration, but out of that context, it’s just a solid concept for a restaurant and I would patronize the hell out of a place like that. Not sure if anyone has ever tried something like it in real life, but if not, they should.)
[Editor’s Note: At the film’s premier, one of the actors was arrested by the FBI and charged with four crimes relating to the January 6 insurrection because of course.]
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Creed III (2023)
Now three films into its own rebirth, and nine films into the Rocky cinematic universe Sylvester Stallone begat in 1976, the story of Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) fees confidant enough to leave behind Stallone. It’s still a formula-laden yet rousing sports movie, one where every turn will likely be predicted, but because of the conviction of the production, you can still cheer along with the familiar. This time Adonis is at the end of his career when an old face resurfaces with Damian “Dame” Anderson (Jonathan Majors), a childhood friend young Adonis looked up to who took the rap for Adonis’ fighting. He landed in prison and watched the journey of Adonis to being a world-championship boxer, which was Dame’s dream that was deferred. Adonis feels immense guilt and questions whether he’s earned his lot, and this trial of confidence and personal reckoning naturally comes down to an extensive pugilist battle, as all personal conflicts must. I laughed that Bianca (Tessa Thompson) was trying to make a point that not all conflict has to be decided by getting punched in the face, and ultimately that’s exactly where we’re headed. The requisite buildup, betrayal, training montage, and reclamation will be expected, but where the Creed franchise has separated itself was with its non-punching-in-the-face moments. I appreciate the added dimension of the characters and the allowances that make them more complex than simply cartoonish villains of the latter Rocky movies. Creed II humanized Ivan Drago Jr. to the point that I didn’t want either fighter to lose. I liked all the breather moments, from Adonis trying to raise a daughter with hearing impairments, to him reflecting and reminiscing with his forgotten friend like it was old times again, to the looming tragedy of saying goodbye to an ailing loved one (that deathbed scene was tremendously moving), and two men warring over hurt feelings of a friendship that meant so much and is trying to get beyond the pain of abandonment and guilt. When you devote that kind of attention to ensure that the drama matters, the boxing takes on added excitement. This is Jordan’s directorial debut and he does a fine job of helping his actors and providing them the space they need. He also finds some visually dynamic ways to film the boxing scenes and give them extra oomph (reportedly he based his approach off of anime and it honestly shows). Creed III may be more of the same but when the franchise devotes due attention to the small things as well as the big things, it’s still an elevated entertainment experience.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Air (2023)
Who exactly could get that excited about a movie about selling a shoe? Apparently, plenty of critics and audiences judging by the success of Air, the dramatization of the eventual formation and presentation for the first Air Jordan sneaker. It’s Amazon’s first original movie that they’ve given a theatrical release since 2019’s Late Night, and it proved a moderate success for a mid-range adult drama before debuting on its streaming service. I was intrigued by the creative pedigree, as I’ve been an ardent fan of Ben Affleck as a director, and the uniformly strong critical reviews, but I kept thinking, “It’s just a shoe.” It was hard for me to imagine getting that drawn into a drama about a bunch of guys trying to get Michael Jordan’s endorsement. I just couldn’t see the movie in this scenario. Now that I’ve actually watched Air, I can credit it as a well-written and well-acted movie about passionate people putting forward a presentation. That’s the movie, and while entertaining, it’s still hard for me to understand all the fuss.
It’s 1984 and Nike isn’t the market-leading trend-setting company that we think of today. They dominated the running world but few if any saw them as hip. They were struggling behind Adidas and Converse in popularity and cultural cache, and CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) had tasked his basketball head of operations Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) with snagging endorsements from the new NBA rookies. Sonny wants to go all-in on just one athlete, a special case that Sonny thinks can revolutionize the game, and one that could propel Nike to the next level. But first he’ll have to convince Jordan’s mother, Deloris (Viola Davis), that this smaller company with its smaller reach is going to be the best fit for her son’s potential future earnings.
This is still a movie about a shoe, but it’s really a movie about people who are good at their jobs and trying to change a paradigm of thinking and the Way Things Are Done. I’ve seen it said that Air is “Moneyball for sneakerheads,” and that’s an apt comparison. It’s about a bunch of smart guys fighting for clout, a group of underdogs going up against the entrenched winners, but it’s really about passionate people trying to get others to recognize their passion. So it’s scene after scene of Sonny trying to break through and get others to understand why his way of thinking is going to be the best. It’s also structured entirely around the big presentation with the Jordans, with each stop at a competing shoe company as its own act break. It makes the movie feel very streamlined and focused. It allows moments for minor characters to get their own moment, to make it seem like there’s a larger world behind every scene. It makes the team feel more filled out, and as each person and artist comes together, it’s reminiscent of movies in general, about various talents coming together to put on a big show. With our hindsight already locked in before the opening credits, it’s got to be the journey that matters here, because we know the eventual coupling, so Air has to justify why the before time could be captivating. It’s engaging because it’s a story built upon underdogs and smart people getting to flex their smarts.
Of course, it’s also not too difficult to make someone look smart with the power of hindsight. This was one of the more maddening features of Aaron Sorkin’s frustrating HBO series, The Newsroom. The focus was on a TV show on a cable news network but it existed in our universe, covering the big stories from the recent past. Rather than providing insight into the struggles of journalists trying to break big stories and follow their leads, Sorkin’s show was his turn to rewrite the news, showing how the foolish journalists should have covered these major events. It was his condescending attempt to tell professionals how they should have done their jobs. However, he had the extreme benefit of 18 months or so of hindsight and seeing what was important and what was less so, which just made his critiques all the more condescending (“Why don’t you know all the things that I know from the future, stupid present people?”). I could do this myself, writing a story about a guy in the 1930s talking down to these people hoarding their gold and how they should, instead, invest in a burgeoning computer industry. It’s not hard to look smart when you have history already in your pocket. This is also the case with Sonny in Air, who says over and over how special Michael Jordan is, and we know this too with our personal hindsight, so it makes him look transcendent. However, there could be any number of guys in history that had a similar hunch about Sam Bowie, the player picked one spot ahead of Jordan in the 1984 NBA Draft and whose career was cut short by rampant leg injuries. That could have happened to Jordan too. Sometimes the greatest athletes are the recipients of just horrible luck (look at Bo Jackson, a modern-day Greek God who could have been an all-timer in two sports).
Where Air glides is with its snappy dialogue and attention to its supporting cast, thanks to debut screenwriter Alex Convery. Despite my reservations on the subject matter, this is proof that a good writer can make any story compelling as long as they channel into the right universal elements. A movie about selling a shoe to a future billionaire becomes an underdog story and one about a group of middle-aged guys trying to live out their dreams by picking the right player to become their vicarious capitalistic dream. The side characters played by Chris Messina as a foul-mouthed agent, and Jason Batemen as an exec who mostly just wants to spend more time with his kids following a divorce, and Matthew Maher (Our Flag Means Death) as a lonely shoe designer, are welcomed and I enjoyed spending time with them all before the big decision. It’s pleasurable just to sit and listen to the conversational banter. If you can find a way to make characters debating the particulars of their industry and make it interesting regardless of industry, then that’s the sign of a good writer. There’s plenty of conflict thrumming throughout, like Sonny pushing to spend his entire department’s budget on one player rather than spreading the risk around, and the climax involves whether or not a billion-dollar company is willing to split some of its earnings with the athlete they’re making mega-million from. It was a first-of-its-kind deal that changed the industry, giving athletes more leverage and direct money for the use of their likenesses, and considering how integral Jordan was to the explosion of the NBA’s popularity, it was money well spent.
There’s no distinct directing flair from Affleck, as I think he recognizes the strengths of this script and how best to utilize them, which is to support his actors and give them space. The most noticeable directing feature is the repeated use of period-appropriate songs and archival footage, which might explain the movie’s staggering reported $90 million budget (for a shoe movie?). Affleck keeps things moving at a light-hearted tone but knows when to slow things down too.
Air is an amusing drama with good performances and good writing and direction that understands how best to hone both of those selling points. It’s very streamlined while still feeling developed, and it manages to make a decades-old shoe deal feel interesting in 2023. I enjoyed it but I would have enjoyed this cast in just about anything, and I feel like the screenwriter and Affleck as a director have better stories on their docket waiting. It’s an enjoyable and intelligent drama with crackling good dialogue. It’s a solid movie but I guess I won’t ever understand the adoration it received, and that’s fine. Air proves you can indeed tell a compelling movie about a shoe deal. There you have it. Now back to that chicken/egg dilemma.
Nate’s Grade: B
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80 For Brady (2023)
I did some minor research and yes, three out of the four actresses of 80 for Brady are indeed in their 80s, with Rita Moreno in her 90s, so there is some truth in advertising still. Speaking of that, this geriatric comedy is about everything you would expect from its very basic premise. Inspired by a true story, four lifelong friends (Moreno, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Lily Tomlin) are diehard New England Patriots fans and more so fans of the team’s famous quarterback, Mr. Tom Brady (playing himself). They’re determined to make one last big trip to support their team at the 2017 Super Bowl, as Tomlin is afraid she doesn’t have much time left. What follows is standard road trip hi-jinks and celebrity cameos the likes of which from Billy Porter and Guy Fieri and Patton Oswalt. Most of the jokes are mild and easily telegraphed, and the formula hews very close to other studio entries in the “old people still got it” ensemble comedy subgenre (Last Vegas, Book Club, The Bucket List, Going in Style, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Calendar Girls, etc.). The target audience is looking for something nice and reassuring with familiar faces. To that end, 80 for Brady mostly succeeds, but for anyone else outside it’s older demographic, it will be a middling and hokey comedy. I laughed out loud at the assertion that the Pats comeback from a 28-3 deficit versus the Atlanta Falcons was the result of one very determined, yet also obsessive to the point of hallucinating, elderly fan giving Brady a special pep talk that motivated him to try harder at winning. The movie isn’t meant to elicit big laughs, more pleasant smiles, and to that end it’s agreeably inoffensive right down to its predictability and easy conclusions. Entirely skippable if you’re under the age of 50.
Nate’s Grade: C
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The Novice (2021)
The Novice could be deemed “the Whiplash for rowing,” and that is it in a nutshell but it also distinguishes itself separately from that Oscar-winning 2014 indie. Debut writer/director Lauren Hadaway was actually on the sound editing team behind Whiplash, and that’s her area of expertise with over 40 credits, and right away you can tell her attention to details as far as filmmaking being an immersive experience for the viewer. It’s been nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards, including Beat Feature, Best Director, and Best Actress. It’s the little indie that could right now, though it also seems like the kind of well-received indie that gets forgotten around award season. That would be a shame, because while not quite at the level of Whiplash, this is a hypnotic and visceral and disturbing portrait of competitive obsession.
Alex Dall (Isabelle Furhman) is a freshman for her East Coast university. She joins the crew team with the goal of being the best. Her coaches encourage her competitive spirit but even they try and warn her to take it easier with her relentless training regiment. Nothing else matters to her.
You feel Hadaway’s background in sound design, how she uses it to disorient and produce a rhythm to her movie, the inhale and exhale of pushing one’s self to their physical limit. It’s accompanied by dizzying edits that feel completely matched by their auditory components (Hadaway also served as a co-editor). It’s frenetic and places you in the mindset of our protagonist, whose single desire is to be the best no matter what. That solitary focus blurs out the outside world, so when we get into trance-like states of close-ups, repetitive edits, and slow-motion extensions, we feel trapped inside her restless state of mind. One critic compared the training montages to the drug use montages from Requiem for a Dream, and this is completely accurate. Alex would never view herself as an addict but that’s precisely what she is. Her personal addiction is at winning, and winning at all costs and being the best.
In Whiplash, Miles Teller’s protagonist was a capable drummer that wanted to be excellent. He already had talent and was pushed to the brink by his monstrous teacher/drill sergeant/abusive father figure. Alex throws herself into unfamiliar situations. She is a physics major even though she doesn’t really like or understand the subject. She joins the rowing team even though she lacks any experience whatsoever. And yet, she still sets her sights on the near impossible. She doesn’t want to be the best freshman, and she doesn’t just want to join the varsity squad; she wants to break all the individual records as soon as possible for a team sport. A normal person would view these goals as unrealistic and potentially out of reach, but that’s the point for Alex. It’s the best or nothing, and her toxic win-at-all-costs mentality is even more toxic because she expects to win even in the most unlikely scenarios. It would be like never driving a car and expecting to win the Indy 500. That adds a different dynamic for Alex but it also makes her even more self-destructive and misanthropic.
The movie becomes a tale of obsession, a downward spiral much akin to an addiction narrative. Alex gradually cuts off all other parts of herself she deems to be a distraction. It’s only small moments where we try and catch a different definition of Alex, the version of her when she might allow herself to relax, but this feels like the “weak Alex” that she’s trying to snuff out, because there shall be no other version of Alex except the one in service to her goal. When she starts having a potential relationship with her T.A. (model Dilone), you think this might be the character’s off ramp, an opportunity for her to settle and realize something else that is meaningful, building an interpersonal relationship. It becomes another distraction to remove. This achieves the artistic vision of showing the mental and physical decline of Alex. Everything in the movie is likewise in service of serving Alex’s grueling goal. However, this also makes her a less dimensional character. If all we know about her is how obsessive she can become, then we’re left to pick up whatever other scraps we’re given to piece together a fuller understanding of her. Perhaps Hadaway doesn’t want any definition beyond Alex’s obsessions. It makes the character less complicated and by extension less compelling, but there is that rubbernecking quality of just watching to see how far she will go before reaching a breaking point. Maybe even death?
This movie would not work as mightily without the committed performance by Fuhrman (Orphan, The Hunger Games). She’s been working ever since she was a child but this is a breakthrough performance for the actress. The intensity of her performance is so conveyed that you might feel like you had a workout yourself. The actress gained ten pounds of muscle over the course of the punishing film experience and athletic training. I had to imagine the movie was shot linearly so they could trace her physical transformation, but I haven’t confirmed it.
Another sound area that greatly elevates the movie is the stirring score by Alex Weston (The Farewell). This is my favorite film score of 2021. It is haunting, moody, and appropriately frantic, with jangling strings and a propulsion that echoes its main character. It has an easy presence of sliding in and out, mimicking the pace of the compulsive training, and standout tracks include the motif “Training” and “Legs Body Arms” and “Seat Race.” Listen to it, folks. Weston has put together greatness and deserves far more recognition than he is being given.
The Novice could do worse than patterning itself after Whiplash, one of the best films of the last decade. What it lacks in originality and characterization it makes up for in execution, immersing the viewer in the insane obsessions of its lead character. Film has always been an empathetic medium and sometimes it’s a trip into the dark side of the human psyche. Why is Alex this way? It’s unknown. Will she ever break free from this toxic mentality? It’s unknown. Even the ending leaves you with enough ambiguity to wonder what Alex will do now. Is she fulfilled, has she had some important introspective breakthrough, or will she never be satisfied, always finding a new mountain to climb even as her body gets painted in bruises and scars? The Novice is an impressive film debut for Hadaway. It’s not the most in-depth movie from a substance standpoint, but the packaging, presentation, and style give it something extra special.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Rumble (2021)
No more and no less than exactly what you’re expecting, Rumble is a giant monsters wrestling movie that’s cute enough to entertain young kids and pass the time agreeably and not much more. The world isn’t exactly fleshed out and the characters are very archetypal and the plot is entirely predictable, but I found it mostly fun and low-level escapism. It’s nothing that will wrestle with the better animated films of the year, but if you have little ones that are fans of wrestling or giant monsters then that might be enough to keep their attention for 90 minutes.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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King Richard (2021)
King Richard confounds me and also doesn’t. I can understand what the point was and shrug my shoulders at its choice of narrative perspective. It’s a hagiography that settles on audience foreknowledge to alleviate any tension, or sustained interest, and at its core is a contradiction of a man deserving scrutiny but served up for celebration. As my pal Michael Galusick put it, “I can’t believe there’s a movie about the rise to greatness for the Williams sisters [Venus and Serena], and it’s centered around their dad.” King Richard is an awards-season hopeful, produced by the Williams sisters, and a questionable biopic with a questionable perspective aimed at telling the hidden story behind the meteoric success of two of the greatest tennis stars of all time.
In the late 1980s, Richard Williams (Will Smith) is working all night as a security guard and spending his mornings to train his two pre-teen daughters, Venus and Serena, in tennis. Richard is convinced they will be superstars, that he and his wife Brandy (Aunjanue Ellis, Lovecraft Country) will be rich and move from their Compton, California neighborhood. Richard gets beaten by local gangs, studies tennis magazines and instructors, and tries to get his girls formal training from professionals while holding them back to his demands. He has a plan, he repeatedly tells others, for their success, and nothing will dissuade him from it.
Firstly, we finally get a movie about the Williams sisters and their dominant rise through the world of tennis, and the movie is almost entirely centered upon their demanding father and his vigilant bordering on abusive training regimen? Richard is meant to be a contradiction and had the movie explored his contradictions in full this could have been an illuminating character study and warts-and-all biopic. However, it’s a movie that fully relies on every viewer’s implicit understanding of the great success of the Williams sisters, so the entire movie serves as a two-hour-plus “I told you so” to Richard’s doubters. Silly neighbor, questioning whether forcing his daughters to perform for hours in the pouring rain constitutes child endangerment. Silly wife, questioning why Richard has insisted his family move into the neighborhood of Compton to better raise his children through adversity and still complain about the dangers that Compton presents and that his daughters must rise above to leave and make something of themselves. Silly tennis coaches, questioning Richard, a man who has no tennis background himself, for demanding his sideline coaching be prioritized over the professionals. Silly “tennis parents,” the kinds that Richard says should be shot, even though he behaves the same way. Silly Williams children, feeling that their demands will be heard and acknowledged as far as their own personal paths and that the other Williams sisters will earn a similar level of attention and affection. Silly sports agents, for being skeptical about this man who says he had a 70-page “plan” for athletic success before his kids were even born and preaching that his unorthodox methods, including paying neighborhood kids to harass and intimidate his girls while they played, would be proven correct. Because, I suppose, it all worked out because Venus and Serena had tremendous success and were inspirations to millions of young African American kids who could finally see themselves in a sport that was privileged and exclusive for generations. He was right, so all of his unorthodox, crazy, dubious methods must have worked, so intuits the movie. It’s less because Venus and Serena have talent and skills and more that their dad worked really really hard and suffered.
With the involvement of the Williams sisters, King Richard only ever goes so far when it comes to critical analysis of its title character. He is certainly presented as a dedicated, hard-working dreamer, but his eccentricities and self-aggrandizing get sanitized as “tough father” when that toughness can cross over into obsession and abuse. It’s like watching 2014’s Whiplash but turned into a feel-good inspirational tale for the ages. At least Whiplash explored the harm of obsession and the pessimistic belief system that whatever it takes to a achieve greatness is excusable. With King Richard, the movie is not at all critical of this ethos. Oh sure, there are points where Brandy Williams speaks up with measured irritation at her husband making rash decisions, excluding the involvement and contributions of others to see his great plan through, and these moments are easily the best in the movie. Finally, someone is pressing this man on his methods and making him confront himself and his flaws. But then Brandy blends back into the background until another half hour goes by and the movie needs to tap her services again. This is the same woman, by the way, who in real life Richard hid her birth control pills in order to back her into a pregnancy and begin his master plan. That’s real. That happened. Same with intentionally keeping his children in Compton so they would learn adversity (tragic side note: one of his older daughters, Yetunde, died in 2003 near a gang house in Compton). And also the fact that Richard walked out on his previous family before Brandy, leaving behind five children all under the age of eight. When he speaks in the movie about always being there for his girls, unlike his father who ran out on him, it rings hollow with the full unflattering context.
The movie seems to adopt Richard’s belief that if he didn’t push so hard for so long, while also withholding them from the tennis juniors circuit, denying them matches for three years, then perhaps they too would have burnt out and gone down a similar path as young superstar Jennifer Capriati. Except Venus’ first breakout success is because of her own insistence and Richard finally, at long last, acquiescing to the choices being made by his own daughters. Who knows, maybe she would have had success even earlier and not burnt out? It’s just as plausible considering that Richard’s regimen included forcing the girls to earn all As in high school on top of rigorous training. I think this detail is meant to make Richard seem like he values their education on par with their sports performances, but it reads to me as another high-pressure burden he’s beset upon his beleaguered daughters to meet his personal definition of success.
Again, if the movie portrayed this man in a more honest approach, questioning his methods and bringing light to his inherent contradictions, holding people to standards he was unable to hold to himself, taking credit solely for the success of the hard-working women in his family, then the movie would have been an intriguing and revelatory character drama. It would have justified shifting the perspective from Serena and Venus to Richard. But the script by Zach Baylin is too uninterested about those interesting details and contradictions. It knows Serena and Venus succeed so it all becomes a long journey of people doubting him only to be proven wrong. The movie feels more than enough like it reaches its emotional climax, father acceding to daughter as she approaches the big stage, and then there is twenty more minutes of tennis action. Why do we need a drawn-out tennis match at this point? The montage of real-life footage of tennis championships achieves the same emotional effect. If the decision was to finally dwell in the excellence and tenacity of Venus as an athlete cutting loose, then why does director Reinaldo Marcus Green (Joe Bell, Monsters and Men) keep favoring other people’s perspectives during the climactic debut match? We keep cutting back to Richard watching, or those in the crowd, or a squat TV screen monitor. I understand the nature of editing coverage, but if this is celebrating Venus’ moment and handing over the baton to her, then why not give her our full focus rather than repeated check-ins on Richard basking in the ascendant triumph of his hard work?
Anyway, if you can take King Richard on its own terms, maybe it will prove fitfully entertaining and inspirational as it follows its formula to the bitter end. It’s received widespread critical praise especially for Smith’s humbled performance. I think Smith is perfectly good, but I also think his inherent charisma, and a generation of audience good will, project onto the character to more excuse Richard’s questionable actions. It would be like watching Tom Hanks portray Jeffry Dahmer; you might not condone all his actions but, come one, that’s American treasure Tom Hanks eating human flesh there. As a sports movie or a father/daughter movie, certain fans of those features might plug into the emotional beats of a feel-good universe and ignore the problematic parts. Maybe we’ll get a story of Venus or Serena from their own perspective, one that sees their father in less flattering terms. In the meantime, King Richard is a feel-good biopic that made me feel bad the more facts I uncovered, and its hero worship of a, at best, complicated man without adequate hesitation made me feel like this was a gift from the Williams sisters for their dear old dad’s ego and legacy.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
For a generation of millennials, those of us who came of age in the 1990s, Space Jam has miraculously accrued a nostalgic fixation. Michael Jordan starred alongside cartoon favorites and we all learned valuable lessons about teamwork. The soundtrack also, as the kids say, slapped, with that titular banger welcoming us to the jam and the R. Kelly eponymous ballad, “I Believe I Can Fly.” Flash forward 25 years, and a new basketball superstar is looking to relaunch the franchise and reinvigorate the Looney Tunes pals for a new generation. Lebron James plays a fictionalized version of himself struggling to connect with one of his sons. He wants the boy to take basketball seriously but worries about his commitment and thinks video games, the child’s true passion, are a distraction for him. He and his son get sucked into the “server-verse” of Warner Bros. studios thanks to an angry A.I. (Don Cheadle) who just wants respect. The scornful A.I. challenges Lebron to a basketball game while tempting Lebron’s son to the dark side. Lebron teams up with Bugs Bunny to reunite the classic Tunes to put together a winning team.
This movie is clearly not intended for adults but at the same time it feels engineered from their references. Are children going to understand William Shatner impressions? Parodies of The Matrix, or Mad Max: Fury Road, or Casablanca? To that end, I question if we’ve come to a point in popular entertainment where the Looney Tunes characters have been eclipsed. When I grew up, cable television, let alone channels devoted to entertaining children, were just beginning in the 1980s, so I did grow up with classic cartoons from decades prior. I knew about Bugs and Daffy and Tom and Jerry and Hannah Barbara and the old guard. Modern American children have grown up with a generation of original cartoons and programming and I would argue they have more nostalgic reverence for shows like The Fairly Odd Parents, Gumball, and other popular Cartoon Network originals. I strongly doubt that the majority of the movie’s stated target audience, children, have any emotional investment or recognition for the old Looney Tunes characters. Perhaps the entire Space Jam sequel is designed to reignite interest in a certain younger demographic, and this wouldn’t surprise me as its real source for existence. To be fair, the original 1996 Space Jam was created to sell sneakers, so it’s not like this is out of step for the franchise’s integrity.
The conception of this movie is less about Lebron James interacting with the classic Looney Tunes characters than Lebron James being the spokesman for a catalogue of Warner Bros. intellectual property (IP). What children are sitting around saying, “I can’t wait to interact with all my favorite Warner properties?” Children do not think like this, they don’t segregate into tribes for different corporate masters. They like what they like and don’t think about whether its corporate parentage is with Disney or Viacom or whatever. Space Jam: A New Legacy feels less like a story or even a movie and more like a catalogue launch for the Warner Bros. gift shop (get your Grandma Matrix sweaters just in time for the fourth movie coming out these holidays!).
The intermingling of different worlds and properties can be done, see The Lego Movie, but more needs to be done other than transporting characters into a world they do not belong. Watching Granny perform moves from The Matrix isn’t funny because what is even being set up for comedy? It’s not a tweaking or commentary on the original, nor is there any recognizable comedy angle; it’s what Family Guy typically does – repeating the scenarios but with different faces. There is a key difference between reference and parody (a point I have discussed at EXTENSIVE LENGTH in my reviews of the very bad Friedberg and Seltzer spoofs). Nobody cares that much about these characters that just seeing them in a different environment is enough. Watching Wile E. Cayote as one of the War Boys in Fury Road is not enough, and I absolutely adore that movie and consider it an instant classic, but if I wanted to just watch Fury Road, I would gladly just watch Fury Road (they do not even call it “Furry Road,” come on!).
By far, the most confounding part of this new Space Jam is the decision-making process over what IP should be included and what should be excluded. I would be fascinated to watch a documentary series just on the creative clashes with studio execs. There are some bizarre choices selected to attend the culminating basketball game as rowdy spectators. I can understand memorable figures like King Kong, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, the Iron Giant, and the Scooby Doo van. Those are immediately recognizable for modern-day children. However, why is Jim Carey’s Mask character there? Why is the grotesque Danny DeVito version of the Penguin there? Why is the Night King from Game of Thrones there? Why is Pennywise the Clown, a vicious and frightening character, there? Why are the droogs from A Clockwork Orange there? Who is that supposed to appeal to? Why would anyone in their right mind include a gang best known for wanton violence and rape to be faces in the crowd to cheer on a basketball game? It would be akin to taking the hillbillies who rape Ned Beatty in Deliverance and placing them side-by-side with cartoons for a movie intended for children. If the droogs and Pennywise made the cut, what inappropriate characters from the vaults of Warner Bros. were denied? This fascinates me.
I also have problems when Bugs and the other Tunes step into the third dimension. Characters that were intended for two-dimensions always look awkward when transported into a three-dimensional realm. It was a smart move keeping the cartoons as their standard hand-drawn selves in the original Space Jam. When the big basketball game commences, the Tunes and James are pulled into three dimensions and the characters do not look good. The circumference of their heads and how it relates to their mouths moving looks all wrong. Bugs looks like a Mylar birthday balloon that has somehow gained sentience. This extra step is likely meant to appeal to modern-day audiences who have turned their noses on more traditional hand-drawn animation in feature films (Tangled and Frozen began as 2-D animated films before going to 3-D). It’s another curious case meant to modernize the Looney Tunes and appeal to a younger demo, and yet it runs counter to so much more of the programming choices and contradictory decision-making.
Is Space Jam: A New Legacy a good movie? Quite simply, no, but then by objective standards neither was the original Space Jam. Lebron James may still be trailing his Airness in a few more NBA records but King James has more natural charisma and acting ability than Jordan who settled as straight man/pitch man. There is an occasional joke that earned a laugh from me, the best being the bait-and-switch reveal of Michael Jordan returning to the Tune Squad, which also seems to imply that Sylvester the cat is kind of racist. I liked Lil’ Rel. Congrats also to the filmmakers for bringing back Lola Bunny, having her voiced by Zendaya, and realizing she can just be a lady bunny good at playing basketball. The original Lola Bunny was hyper sexualized and I’ve already read too many comments from dregs on the Internet upset this new rabbit doesn’t make them feel funny in their pants (“IF I CANNOT OBJECTIFY THIS CARTOON RABBIT, THEN WHY AM I EVEN WATCHING A MOVIE INTENDED FOR CHILDREN?”). The moral or message is pretty simple about accepting others for who they are and not how you demand, which is weirdly exemplified in a cross-generational conflict where Lebron will not allow his son to play video games because his coach growing up thought they were a waste of time. As if he’s only allowed to play basketball with every waking and sleeping second of his existence. Lebron grew up in the late 90s when video games were mainstream and great. His son is an obvious game design prodigy, but it will take him the whole movie to see.
Feeling like the unholy IP orgies that were Ready Player One and The Emoji Movie, the Space Jam sequel (or reboot) feels more like a catalogue launch or a streaming channel opening its vast archives for ready-made consumer consumption. There are several moments where I just shrugged and said to myself, “Well, that happened,” like Granny doing her fancy Matrix moves or Porky Pig battle rapping. I think the idea of Lebron helping the classic Looney Tunes characters in another wacky edition of basketball would have made for a suitable children’s movie. The original only focuses on the Looney Tunes and gets by. For whatever reason, the studio execs insisted to the six credited screenwriters (pity them all, and the sixty un-credited) that this serve not as a franchise relaunch but as a corporate portfolio branding showcase. The movie gets lost in the shuffle from all the haphazard and contradictory impulses to see this through, turning from the game of basketball into decades-past-their-prime Austin Powers jokes. Regardless, Space Jam: A New Legacy is less new and more everything Warner Bros. owns the rights to in the past that they would like to remind you about. Watch it all now on HBO MAX, folks!
Nate’s Grade: C-
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