Blank Check with Griffin & David - Space Jam: A New Legacy with James Newman

Episode Date: July 25, 2021

Welcome to the slam, it’s time to jam - it’s our first in-person recording since the pandemic! Griffin’s brother James Newman returns to the pod to chat BASKETBALL, a topic that Griffin now knows slightly more about after watching The Last Dance. Is LeBron a bad actor? Does anyone really understand the complicated metaphysics of the Warner Bros Serververse? Join us as we discuss! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Welcome, King James. I am the king of this podcast. Okay. Domain. Is that Al? That's, yes, Mr. Rhythm. Okay, okay. One thing I want to say right off the bat,

this character, the antagonist of this film is named Algy Rhythm. It is a play on algorithm. Oh, that's what that was about? It is. It's subtle. It's subtle. It's subtle. Oh, okay. Okay. But for most of the movie, they take to calling him Al G, which then sounds like they're saying

Al G every single time. Like the little green, mossy. Mossy bacteria or whatever it is. And then at one later point, he says, call me Mr. Rhythm. And I'm like, yeah, you should have been calling him Mr. Rhythm calling him mr rhythm much cooler hour much cooler much cooler the screenwriters should have made that decision algae sounds so dumb when they're like algae has kidnapped my son and you're like your son must be pretty fucking weak if algae could get him i want to call out right away i just looked up algae rhythm in the villains wiki in the in the villains wiki yeah do you know about

the villains wiki it's a collection of all villains right yes it says that he was portrayed by don cheadle in his first villainous role not true not true don cheadle's bad guy and out of sight yeah i feel like there's probably others like has don cheadle been like the main antagonist of a thing and also the question is is the villains wiki run by someone who doesn't know that non-franchise movies exist? Probably not. I'm just saying. Current Emmy nominee Don Cheadle has definitely played negative characters, antagonistic characters before. That's all. Sorry.

It's like there was some, who was it? There was like, I think it was when Mark Ruffalo was like saying pro is real stuff on Twitter or something. There was like some Marvel actor getting mildly canceled for something online. And I saw people on Twitter like like a Marvel stands saying like Mark Ruffalo should be grateful. He was nobody before Kevin Feige. And it's to them. Maybe that's true. It's like you didn't exist. Don Cheadle didn't exist before he was the second

actor to play war machine he was and that's the perspective that the villains uh wiki mods are coming from can i just read some of the other things here on the space jam a new legacy uh quotes page do you have to i want to i want to because i think it's a pretty good summation of the bleakness of this movie okay first of First of all, the quote I read, of course, the famous line, welcome King James. I'm the king of this domain. Has the parenthetical before it from trailer. LeBron has just been pulled into the server verse for the first time. Good.

Thank you. Thank you for for clarifying. I said this is my sound check, but the Bugs Bunny line, if we're going out, we're going out loony. Of course, Granny, brackets, facing off with Kronos,

I'm going old school on his butt. On his butt? Uh-huh. Granny's got a lot to say in this movie. Too much. We should silence Granny. Granny's canceled. From trailer,

LeBron James, what in the Matrix hell? LeBron James, from trailer, looking for his son. Bet Will Smith ain't got a deal with this. I don't remember him saying that in the movie. I remember him saying that. I tried to block out as much of the movie as possible. I can't remember why he says it, though.

LeBron James, granny's out here having a martini at halftime. Granny, haters gonna hate. How about this? That happens. How about this famous line? Lola Bunny, we'll get your son back, I promise. That's a good line. She's right.

She pulled it off. Six credited screenwriters. Well, here's Zendaya. You got one of the hottest stars in Hollywood, right? Playing Lola Bunny, a beloved character, saying such famous lines as, got you, Bron. I have a rant about her,

about the treatment of Lola Bunny that you need to remind me to. Yeah, about the treatment of lola bunny that uh you you need to remind me to yeah i'm gonna jump in on that i'm gonna tag in on that i'm gonna fucking alley oop that rant last two quotes i wish to read this one says in brackets repeated line okay algae rhythm it's game time you didn't really need to repeat it there's only one game yeah no he repeats it, though. And then here's the final quote on this page for Space Jam A New Legacy, the movie we're talking about today.

Attributed to Fred Flintstone. Yabba dabba doo. Wait, does he... Is he in it? He comes running down the hill, right? It's in a crowd shot. Like, I guess he says that, but in the mix,

18 other characters are also saying their catchphrase like tony soprano saying bada bing or whatever right glenn eastwood saying like gran torino he should god you okay god let me just i do the introduction as quick as possible because we're just overflowing with takes here this is blank check with griffin and david i'm griffin i'm David. This is a podcast about filmography. Directors have massive success early on in their careers. They have a series of Blank Checks. That's not what this episode's about.

This episode's about several years ago, people demanded that my brother, James, need James E. Newman, come on the show after many stories were told about our childhood together. And we did a siblings choice as we had done before

with Joey Sims and Romley Newman and James picked Space Jam which was arguably your pivotal movie growing up, right? It was kind of the landmark. A movie you shared as a Yeah, I think our Not necessarily my favorite movie, but just one that we

experienced together. Yes, you loved it. Well just one that we experienced together. Yes. You loved it. Well, one that was also just marketed right at my soul at the time. Yes. They were coming after me. And that it was a cross-section of, like, Michael Jordan being your hero and Bugs Bunny being my hero,

and one of the few things we shared at a young age when we usually did not get along. So you came on, and you talked about that, and we, for a while now, have just had on the spreadsheet, well, of course, James will come back and we'll talk Space Jam 2. People have been questioning, why aren't you guys continuing to cover the DC movies or do like Marvel updates or whatever? And there's a part of it that's just like a thousand other fucking podcasts do them.

We start to feel burdened by it. You don't want to interrupt the schedule by having to do four of these a year. It's more interesting to do the current releases that other podcasts aren't going to cover, which is why we're doing this in Hotel Transylvania, even though they're not directors we've covered, in addition to the directors

we do cover. But Jesus fucking Christ, this goddamn movie. Yeah. Like, I don't regret that we committed to doing an episode on it other than that I had

to watch this movie closely. You were going to watch it. I was going to watch it either way. Although we did say in the theater at one point, I think probably about 30 minutes in,

that we would have walked out. If not for... You said that 15 minutes in, James. Okay, 15 minutes in. It's a tough early hang, this movie. Yes. I will say. I do think it improved.

I do. I do. We're going to be talking a lot of relative scale here today. Yes. I mean, it's not a good movie. I will say say i think the pre-server stuff is like deathly like that's when you turned to me james when you were like

very this is wallpaper right yeah yeah it had no entertainment value yes i will say lebron is a great actor nope i i'm wait i thought he was i so convincing okay look so i think i'm going to be the most positive person on Space Jam in this room and we are in the room we are in the room this is our first in person record since March 8th 2020

we are all in the same room we are Ben's new apartment come on Ben I picked a name at some point when I first moved in here it's very nice because Ben's old apartment Come on, Ben. Okay, so I picked a name at some point. Okay. When I first moved in here. It's very nice, because Ben's old apartment was called Small Fine.

When we recorded there, we called it Small Fine. This is definitely much bigger and more fine. This apartment's like fine. Yeah. Oh, okay. I like that. Yeah. How about if it's like, well, because it's got to have a size thing.

I don't know, but I don't want to call it big. No, but it's a good size. It's a good size. You've got some space here. Good. Good fine. Good fine. All right.

Good fine with class. We'll refine that. We should refine. We'll refine. Two things. I have to say two things. Sure. This movie surpassed my expectations,

but I think I really did expect the worst thing of all time. Our text story we have with the Doughboys. Yeah. We've been texting about this movie for a while. For a couple months. Every clip that would drop or whatever. Every new detail, every new interview. That was our regular dumping ground. And then you saw it and you said,

it's better than I thought it would be only because I thought it would literally be the worst movie of all time. Right. I really expect it. And it's not good. And to be fair, you relayed that to me. I did. Which, I,

we both had really low expectations going in, but maybe it bumped them up to just, there might be some entertainment value. You then did follow it up by saying like, it's awful. It's not good. Right. It's not good,

but I was expecting truly my least favorite thing I've ever seen. And it was a little bit. I don't think LeBron does a terrible job. I do. I think he's horrible. I don't. I think he does about as about him. He does what he can do,

which is like very little. So look, this probably just an unstructured series of rants because who the fuck cares about the plot of this movie? And there's just like 18 different elements to talk about. We definitely have to talk about the plot of this movie. Well, we will,

but that's its own rant. I'm saying rather than structuring the episode around going through that. Can I throw out my LeBron thought right off the bat? Sure. Because now we're in it. Welcome to the Space Jam. Right? Which, by the way, I talked about this with the podcast

The Ride Boys. Jason Sheridan and I agree, apparently it's a sentiment that Bugmane also holds. Notorious podcast. Yeah, I'm not sure I want to align that Bugmane also holds. Notorious podcast. Yeah, I'm not sure I want to align with Bugmane, but sure. This movie should be called Cyber Space Jam. I know that's like a fucking silly title, but also Space Jam makes zero sense as the title for this film.

Does Space Jam... Well, it makes no sense because space is not involved, though. They take Marvin the Martian's spaceship and fly around in space to get from one planet to another. Actually, they do do that. That's the only reason it's called Spaceship, and I have to believe that's the reason why the different properties are visualized as

planets. I would actually almost argue that it's more of a space movie than it is a jam movie. I think this is just not a basketball movie. There's not a lot of jam. No. What's wild is that it's not a basketball movie and also the basketball game in this is ostensibly longer

than it is in the original film. It's very long. It's an hour long. It's an hour long. It's a full half of the movie. Right. Which the original movie is like 65 minutes

when you take out the opening and closing credits. This movie is two hours? Quite long. 150 something? It's an hour and 55 minutes long. Yes.

Should be called Cyberspace jam i just pointedly when they play the game it is terrestrial like you see trees and shit in the background well they're on a planet that's true okay but that's like saying like this is a space podcast because we're on a planet that's in space well that's what wait wait in space jam the original are they in space for the game yes but. But they're on a planet, right? They're dealing with fucking aliens. The point is they leave Earth.

They do leave Earth. They go to Mora Mountain or whatever. Or whatever. But either way, it's a sequel. Either way, it's a sequel anyway. It has to be called Space Jam. No, but you could have called it Cyberspace Jam. Any scientists that listen to the show, please weigh in.

Let us know. This is the fun. Because when they were going to have Jeff Gordon or whatever, it was going to be called race jam, where it's like, well, no, no, no. Jam is basketball. It's like, no, but you need the, it's just what's imprinted in people's heads now.

They were going to make it a driving movie. I'm going to get to my LeBron thoughts in a second. We talked about that on the last Space Jam episode. I'm going to get to my LeBron thoughts in a second, but first movie comes out, because there's a little more I found out since we did the last Space Jam episode. I'm going to get to my LeBron thoughts in a second, but first movie comes out, because there's a little more I found out since we did the last episode, right? First movie comes out is a big hit, right?

But it's also like a big hit with an asterisk, which is it costs so much fucking money. It was so expensive for the time. It costs like $90 million 25 years ago. It made like $90 million domestic. It did $250 million worldwide. It did 250 worldwide. So that's like... It did well worldwide.

And obviously did well on video. Right. And more so, did a billion dollars in merchandising. So they were just like, it's worth it for us. Cash cow, even if theatrically

these movies are so expensive to do. Right? The Jordan deal would have been even more expensive for the sequel. But they go ahead, hire animators. There's things that have come out that the fucking sequel was going to be about a villain named Berserko played by Mel Brooks. They didn't have a script, but they were hiring animators and hiring Mel Brooks and designing the character and then going like, we'll write it later. And Berserko was some new fucking alien villain, right? Um, they're developing it.

And then it turns out that it was a bluff. And this one Warner brothers executive who had like gotten the green light was hiring people to work on it, had never gotten Jordan's commitment. Just assumed I'll figure that out later. Right. Jordan said no. And he was like, I'll win him over. Right. I'll get exactly.

I'll get him on board. Right. And then like nine or 10 months in Jordan was like berserko. Right. But they re-signed Joe Pitka. Right, right, right. Then Reitman was back on. And then like nine months in, Jordan was like, inclusively no.

For the fifth time, no. Right. His argument was apparently just like, I did that movie. I don't really like being in a movie. It's a boring process. I feel no need to do that ever again. Right? So then the movie immediately gets shut down.

But Warner Brothers has this juice, which is like, this is the the first time the looney tunes have been profitable and relevant in a while i think they didn't realize was that the last theatrically released bugs bunny cartoon was 1969 until they did a looney tunes short called the ducks persist i think in the late 80s okay like they were really kind of stagnant and the lo Looney Tunes were, like, repackaged Saturday morning cartoons, right? Like, they still exist. When Cartoon Network launches in the early 90s, they're playing Looney Tunes all the time. But, like, they weren't making any new shit with them. When they did the first, what was it, Hair Jordan commercial,

which was the Super Bowl commercial with Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan, that was kind of, like, the first new Bugs Bunny thing in a couple decades. That blows up, right? The commercial's huge. Then they do a follow-up commercial. That's also huge. They do this McDonald's promotion

where they sold cups that were different NBA stars with different Looney Tunes. That's fucking huge. That leads to the 90s wave of Looney Tunes characters wearing hip-hop regalia t-shirts, which then become this big money earner. And that's where the movie comes from, where they're like, Bugs Bunny's now relevant again. It turns out there's like this nostalgia for the character that we've been setting on,

but also the cross section of him into this other world is huge for us. Then movie comes out, hit, Jordan doesn't want to do the sequel. They're like, fuck. The chemistry chemistry the formula is replicate this again so it's Space Jam 2 cancelled Race Jam with Jeff Gordon almost happens Spy

Jam with Jackie Chan was the first one announced doesn't go through Skate Jam with Tony Hawk and then there was a Golf one with Tiger Woods I don't know if they ever came with the title but you know they talk to Tiger Woods. I don't know if they ever came up with a title. They didn't, but you know, they talked to Tiger Woods. Kids love golf. Love it.

They love golf. David, they love it. I would say though that- Tiger was so ubiquitous that it was- Well, not only was Tiger- You and I were saying this. But I think there's something about Tiger that tacks on to Michael Jordan

in a way that LeBron really doesn't, which is there's something very unknowable about Tiger. He, you know, he's sort of, he's both, you know, a fierce competitor and embraces like the,

the success and notoriety, but also does not give much of who he is publicly, which was the truth. He feels elusive and mythical. But he was also at the time, very family friendly, very like shiny and, you know,

very similar to Jordan. Mass appeal. Right shiny and, you know, mass appeal. Right. Exactly. You know, everyone likes Tiger. And now he continues to be very family friendly and have a great reputation. But here's the other thing. This is the other thing. Like, James, we're talking about this after the fact.

There's there's juice. There's inherent juice in the fact that Jordan was going through shit at the time of Space Jam, which we talked a lot about in our original episode. It's part of the drama. The gambling things going on, his dad getting murdered, the fact that he's like... Well, that's not in the movie, right. No, it is! It is!

In the first scene, in the press conference, the first scene of Space Jam, he says, something like, what happened with my father? I want to... No, since the death... I think he literally says, since the death of my father. You know, I want to play baseball. And this is an important point,

I feel like, which is, to the extent that LeBron James is the author of this movie, which I think to a fairly large extent he is... Almost by default. It is an incredibly insecure movie. Yes. In a way that Space Jam was not at all. In that LeBron James has a lot.

If you just think about the entire career of LeBron James, there is a lot of things to mine. There's a lot of conflict. I mean, it's different than the conflict with Jordan, but there's a lot of conflict. And Space Jam is staring all the Jordan conflict head on. In ways that, like, Space Jam goes so far in ways that are probably not even fair to Michael Jordan. The way that the first Space Jam lampoons his baseball career

is probably over the top. It represents it as worse than it was. I think that Jordan was on board with that, though, because he knew, like, it's better if I laugh at it. Of course he was. And LeBron instead basically, and even the credits announced this, which is

just like, this guy's amazing. Everything has worked. He's the greatest player of all time. His only problem is he's a dick to his son. Right. That's it. Alright, I have some pushback. Okay. There's a pivotal line in this movie where Al G. Rhythm, played by Don Cheadle, an Academy Award nominee,

11-time Emmy nominee, nominated of course for his wonderful work in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier this year. We really love how well he did. Says to LeBron's son that LeBron has a record of abandoning his family. Now, he is alluding, of course, to LeBron

leaving the Cavaliers and then leaving the Heat. I was like, Al, chill out. LeBron appears the Cavaliers and then leaving the heat. Now, so it's, I was like, Al, chill out. LeBron appears to be a good family man. Like just because the guy left a team doesn't mean he's, but that's the subtle undercurrent to Space Jam. And it's an undercurrent, not like the original where it's in your face is like, yes,

LeBron is a great, great success in all ways. Yes, LeBron has climbed the mountain, but everyone kind of, you know, doesn't like LeBron as a great, great success in all ways. Yes, LeBron has climbed the mountain, but everyone kind of, you know, doesn't like LeBron as much, right? Like it's like a little, everyone's kind of like, well. Can I push back on that a little? Which is, they've already, by the point that he says that to his son,

they've already introduced Algyrhythm as this horrible manipulative force who plays on people's insecurities. He's not a great guy. Michael Jordan in the first Space Jam, it's like the world is telling michael like this baseball thing is a joke and and michael is basically for the first half of the film billy bob thornton-ing it where he's like i don't play basketball right i'm not here to play which is kind of the looting teams are throwing him the ball and he's saying i don't know what this is right lebron is not bearing

himself in this movie in the same way. In any way. But he also, I will also say, he is less of a mess than Michael Jordan. Just, even though there is stuff, Michael Jordan, it's messy.

Especially right then. but it's interesting that Space Jam is trying to stare all of the mess that Michael Jordan was going through in the face.

This is sanitizing. And LeBron is trying to sanitize, but in his own way is telling on himself more than Michael Jordan did. By LeBron is trying to sanitize, but in his own way is telling on himself more than Michael Jordan did. By like what he chooses to acknowledge and doesn't. And even just like, as you're saying,

opening scene of original Space Jam, right? Him playing with his dad, I believe I can fly. Sweet scene. Then it goes to the fucking opening credits song with this banger of a song and this montage. The high point of the group. Which absolutely demented that they don't do that song in the opening credits of this like it just is so obvious to hire some new artists to do space

jam 2021 version i remember the credits of this movie i don't remember the music some absolutely generic song that sucks it's just something else right that eats my butt like it's the whole soundtrack sucks you do the song like i obviously understand you're not going to cover. I believe I can fly because R. Kelly, you don't want to fucking touch that. Do welcome to the Space Jam. But you do this fucking opening credits. That's like, look at everything LeBron's accomplished. And then you cut back and it's like him just being an asshole to his sons.

Right. Whereas in Space Jam, you cut back from that. And it's Jordan at a low point. It's him at a press conference saying, my dad was just murdered. I'm retiring. And as you said, James, a key point, the original Space Jam does a very good job of, despite the fact that it's set up, this is Michael Jordan, one of the most famous people in the world, arguably the most dominant athlete in his field of all time, right? The most dominant any athlete has ever been in any field. Makes him feel like a normal fucking guy.

Yes. The first Space Jam shrinks Michael Jordan down. Successfully. And this film doesn't even try to do that. It does the opposite, which is, we're open on LeBron's house. Look at the fucking view. Yeah.

This is like a $20 million home. It's a nice view. It's a great view, but even the scene that they shoot between he and his wife, you're looking out at this picture frame window behind LeBron where you can see all of Los Angeles, whereas

Jordan, again, as part of drilling down on the controversy and sort of also what at the moment was seen as wrong with Michael Jordan, they put him in a Birmingham suburban, nice home, but a suburban home. The house is like somebody wants a baby. The know suburban nice home but a suburban home the kids are running out of a minivan right wait what do you want to say ben is that his real family

no no in both cases fake families fake actors but it's also in both cases like assuming you know lebron has three kids and they're three kids you know like they change their names it's analogous it's basically supposed to represent is it that the aspirations have changed like whereas it used to be like yeah I want to think of my athletes as like someone I could get a beer with and now it's like I want to think of my athletes as these like mogul gods Instagram like look at their fucking house look at

their life thing that doesn't translate to a movie where you want to relate to people tougher to relate to right in social media you want aspirational shit I sort of agree with that, but I also just think it's just the person. Yeah.

I think if this were Giannis on Dentecumbo's Space Jam, I think you could put him in a country home. You could put him in a small house on the water in Greece. Of course.

Giannis, there's such a person. I mean, the thing is... But it's also that Giannis, similar to Jordan, basketball was their singular public focus. And even though Jordan became this marketing phenomenon, it never felt like he wasn't against that. And I obviously love making money and all that,

but he never wanted that anywhere near as bad as what he wanted competitively. Right. Whereas LeBron wants to be a mogul. Yes. And not just a mogul, but, you know, a role model. You know, it's everything around. And I'm not saying it is taken away from his basketball career at all.

He's incredibly successful, but it's always been hand in hand. Yes. And like, not just like, you know, Jordan's famous thing of like Republicans buy shoes, too. I don't want to fucking, you know, like take a stand on shit. People arguing that he should have been more political at the peak of his power. Jordan was just like, look, I play basketball and I do things that help build my image as a dominant basketball player. When Jordan was doing the eight billion commercials he would do a year, they would always center

around him as a basketball player. Right. Yes. Whereas LeBron wants to be like 18 different things at the same time. And he wants to be like, this is why I prefer LeBron. But I find Jordan more dramatically. But we're not talking about as people we're talking about as as the basis of a movie, right? A movie riffing on their persona. And I would also say that that Jordan quote is, I think sort of works two ways where it's often just cited working one way, which is that Jordan just really cares about money. So he doesn't want to get into politics, which I think it's a little more than that, which is also Jordan really, you know, yes, he cares about money, but also like, it's not like he, he mostly cares

about basketball and to be in an ad is one thing, but to wade into politics is another. And I think Jordan correctly intuited that to wade into politics was more than just maybe something that would hurt his bottom line, but also something that would take a chunk of his energy and time and life. But his main

vice is gambling. Yes. LeBron's main vice is gambling yes you know and like you know jordan doesn't want to you know lebron's main vice is what like starting schools and being like well but to be fair i mean you know lebron's main vice it's not really a vice but relates to the nba right where it's like what lebron has done vis-a-vis the NBA is controversial. What he's done with his career is controversial. Now, LeBron might be completely right about, first of all, his right to do all this stuff, but also just sort of like that it was right for him

and all that. But at the same time, like this, the movie just other than that one throwaway line by a villain fails to acknowledge that this is like, you know, in a lot of corners reviled. Right. And that I'm not saying that the film has to, you know, jump on that the same way it did with Michael's baseball career. But that sounds like a conflict that could be useful in a film. Ben looks deeply confused. I want to take the opportunity to for once clarify a thing I do know about basketball. I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, what James and David are referring to is LeBron has stirred a lot of ire over the years for constantly sort of thinking as like a businessman first and jumping from one team

to another to whatever things is most advantageous for him at that moment versus like a Jordan who had the loyalty to the Bulls for so long was invested in that team invested in a town you know right became this local hero and all that sort of LeBron has changed the NBA LeBron's decision to go from Cleveland uh to Miami and build and not just go there but build the team around him in Miami sort of using social persuasion and you know sort of recruiting other people to do the same thing he did, not just affected his career and the way people viewed him,

but has now had a ripple effect where the NBA is less about franchise and city and a lot more about player empowerment and players sort of having the power to shape teams and therefore the league the way that they would like to. So I'm going to live in this city now and I can get these three players to come with me. And it's sort of, you know, again, the negative view is that it undermines also the team building aspect, like really as opposed to,

oh, you have to draft smart or trade smart or make smart signings. It's just like, can you recruit, you know, one guy to want to come live in your city and play for your organization? And if you can, he can go get three more guys and that's it. And he sort of wields his celebrity

and his like legend status in a way to sort of like shift what are considered norms, right? Is that fair to say? Aside from his persuasion and everything, it's also just like,

Jordan wanted to be a player. He wanted to be the best player, but he wanted to play within the game as it was pre-established. This is all stuff I understand only because I watched The Last Dance. Whereas LeBron is just like, here's what I think basketball should be,

and I'm LeBron, and everyone listens to me, so I can change. There's a famous photo from, I believe it was the off-season where LeBron signed with the Heat, that's referred to as the banana boat photo. Yes.

Which is LeBron, Carmelo, and Chris Paul. David had to explain this to me because we went to the game. It's post-Heat, but it's in this year. Wasn't the banana boat crew at the game that we went to? Well, the game we went to for our episode was Dwayne Wade's last game, and so I believe they were all there.

LeBron and Melo were certainly there. I can't remember if Chris Paul was there as well. The crowd was going crazy. They took to the court and I didn't know what was going on. David had to go. It's the banana boat crew. And I was like, that sounds fun to me. Tell me about this banana boat. It's twofold which is I think what you're talking about.

First, LeBron has used his social influence has cultivated social influence and then used it to help team build, but then also has really marketed that element, right? Of like, I'm sort of the Don of the NBA. These guys are my, like, you know, sort of, you know, counsel, sort of, these guys are under my wing.

Well, here's a pin I want to return, I want to place here, because I'm going to keep on going back to this over the course of the episode. The thing it reminds me of a little bit is the way The Rock has collected other global movie stars who hustle as hard as he is. And it's like, Kevin Hart, you do five movies with me, and also you do these cameos.

Ryan Reynolds, you're now in The Rock. But here's the difference. Yeah. LeBron is actually the best at basketball. I accept that. Or The Rock is not. I accept that. The Rock ison is actually the best at basketball i accept that i accept that the rock is pretending he's everyone's favorite i accept that but business model wise it's the same and when you talk about like what is lebron's vice and i don't cast aspersions when i say this because i understand lebron is the best in his field of what he does

and also i respect him as a person like i do think he has done undeniably good things in many areas of his life, right? As someone who knows fucking nothing, I'm even aware of that. But I think his two vices are power. He's got that thing that feels very emblematic of celebrity today, where it's like, you need to constantly be doing more and more.

You need to be disrupting different areas. You need to have your fingers in 18 different pots. You can't just be the best at what you are doing, whatever your chosen field was. You have to also invest in Blaze Pizza. You have to have an overall deal at a movie studio, not just make a Space Jam sequel, right? You need to be developing, like all this sort of shit. I also think his other vice is he really wants to be developing like all this sort of shit i also think his other vice is

he really wants to be liked in a way i would argue michael jordan did not sean fantasy had a very good tweet about this where he was like the fundamental difference between the space jams is that lebron thinks a lot about how people perceive him i'm gonna misquote this i can read it lebron is concerned with being beloved i think that's true i don't i don't know that jordan wanted to be loved he did i think he wanted to be admired and idolized he made a bugs bunny movie though you know what i mean like for all his badass they had to talk him into that that's the other still did it and i will say i will say that it's kind of interesting jumping off point also to the performances because jordan's performance in the first space jam

carries what you're talking about with it which is throughout the whole film he's kind of like what is this what's this how did i end up here i didn't know how to play basketball yeah which is the lebron's performance is sort of the opposite, which is, I'm in this, and I'm trying to sell every line, every story. much harder to far lesser results.

Now, this was the LeBron point I wanted to get to, okay? I think that's like a key difference, and I'll say another difference is that,

like, Michael Jordan is a movie star. Even though he only made one movie, it's one of those things, and Last Dance proved this again, where it's like, that guy's just so a movie star, even though he only made one movie. It's one of those things. And Last Dance proved this again, where it's like that guy's just so compelling on camera, right?

There was a reason he was so successful as an ad pitchman. It's not just that he's like absurdly handsome, but he just had whatever that fucking thing was, right? Where like certain very pretty people who cannot deliver a line convincingly on screen still become a movie star because they are just engaging to watch and jordan had that energy and lebron i don't think has the same natural performer energy where it's like he's a likable guy he's been compelling in different things on

camera he's good in train wreck but he's not as like innately just kind of like holy fucking shit right just standing there uh which i'm not saying it's a physical appearance thing i'm saying it's that weird charisma that comes through the camera doesn't i don't disagree with any of this because i don't think he's good in the movie because nothing is good right but i just felt bad for him watching i feel bad for him too i don't because i think he's i think he's terrible in this i don't necessarily blame him he's terrible so i think he's terrible i'm gonna go on a side tangent but it's good tie back. I really have a point here. I think he's incredibly good in train wreck. And that was the moment

where that movie comes out. I rewatched a lot of his scenes on YouTube recently. They're the best parts of that mediocre movie. And like, it was one of those things where it was like,

okay, now we're like eight years away from this. Let's rewatch this away from the hype and see like, was this fucking Diddy and get him to the Greek where everyone was like, oh my God,

Diddy's amazing this. And it's like, no, Diddy's 5% better than you where everyone was like, oh my God, Diddy's amazing in this. And it's like, no, Diddy's 5% better than you thought he was going to be. Well, isn't it sort of a Timberlake moment? That was my question. That's why I wanted to rewatch it. Is it just like, hey, he's charming. Like, he must be amazing.

The superinflation. I think LeBron is genuinely very good. And I was also watching outtakes and his improv riffs were really fucking good. And not just that they were funny, but they were like in the scene. He was emotionally invested. He would like respond to Bill Hader appropriately, all that sort of shit, which gets to this thought. Side tangent. A couple of years ago, I was at a party at some fucking movie cocktail party thing.

A couple years ago, I was at a party, at some fucking movie cocktail party thing, and one of the guys there, David, look it up, because I'm going to forget his name, was the guy who wrote 48 Hours. I think he shares the screenplay credit with Walter Hill, but it was his script originally. Sure, his name is Larry Gross?

Yes, exactly. And I went up to him, because I fucking love 48 Hours and I love early Eddie Murphy. And I wanted to ask him questions about that because Eddie Murphy is like 19 in that movie. That's the thing that makes him a star. I'm so fascinated. Eddie Murphy having this like absurd movie star career that will never be replicated again. Asking him like, what was that like? And he gave me like a fucking two hour monologue that was just a cat nap.

Right. But the thing he said was, I forget who the movie was written for. And they dropped out. They were looking for somebody. Eddie Murphy had just started popping on Saturday Night Live because the first half

of that first season, they don't really use him. And there's the famous moment where the show is running short. They send him out. He does stand up. And overnight, he becomes a success.

And then the star of Saturday Night Live and saves the show. He's now the hot guy. Paramount suggests they hire him to do this movie. They hire him. He shows up. He's shitting the bed. As Larry Gross put it, for the first couple weeks of filming, he is sucking. He just

doesn't know how to act. He's very uncomfortable. He's like a stand-up. He can be sketch. He can play out to the crowd, but to be in a scene and be present and listen to someone play the stakes of it, he's not doing it. He's dead and he's not funny he can play out to the crowd but to be in a scene and be present listen to someone play the stakes of it he's not doing it he's dead and he's not funny right and then the one scene they shoot i think two weeks in and they were like about to shut down the movie go for reshoots whatever the one scene they shoot is the famous scene that makes eddie murphy a movie star where they go into the bar and he asked nolte for his badge and they go into this redneck bar

and murphy pretends that he's the cop and just the best scene in the movie command of the room and like lit up. Everyone's electrified. And then they go like, OK, let's go watch the dailies and figure out what the fuck is going on. And gross and he'll watch everything they have. And they're like, I got it. Murphy is activated because it's a jump ball. This is why I'm bringing this up here, okay? He is like, that scene's a challenge to him. There are people he's playing off of. There's a thing he's got to overcome. When he's in a scene where he's just playing the straight man or he's

playing the wild guy, but it's wild in opposition to nothing, he doesn't know what to do. He's 19. He hasn't intellectualized his talent yet right but what he needs is the activation of the confrontation and so they rewrite the whole movie and go every fucking scene needs to be a jump ball nolte has to be challenging him in every scene murphy as an actor has to feel like there's something for him to overcome we need to onset create the the sensibility of nolte's a far more established actor than you. He's going to act circles around you. You have to fucking prove us wrong. And they do that,

and they rejigger the whole movie, and it fucking works, and he becomes a movie star, right? I think Trainwreck is a jump ball for LeBron. I think he's on a set with all these funny people. He's not trained in comedy. He has to hold his own in scenes with Bill Hader. He is activated by the fact that he's improvising, that he has to hold his own in scenes with bill hader he is activated

by the fact that he's improvising that he has to be thinking strategically i get everything that you're saying skin in the game versus this where now people have told him you were good in that movie just play lebron well but also this movie is dog shit it is it's written like shit it's stupid it's about algae rhythm horrible but like he cannot I feel like pull off the most basic emotions and scenes

here's my counter to that no one could save this script no one no one could save this but you could

give a more functional performance it would not save this movie I have two thoughts first of all we said this after we watched

Griff and I saw the movie together I don't know if you said that but he's better at the comedy in this movie than he is the drama you said to me he's pulling off 30

of the comedy and none of the yes i agree with that yeah i agree and then and on the drama side david you were just saying can we really blame lebron for this i don't know if we can but to the extent that we can blame i would i would question the fact that again this is lebron's movie maybe it would have helped him play off the drama if he would question the fact that, again, this is LeBron's movie. Maybe it would have helped him play off the drama if he would have included anything that tacks in any way onto any secure insecurity or issues he's had in his life. Instead, it seems to be a completely made up storyline where he won't let his son, you know, get into coding. I mean, we were talking about maybe like even if the storyline with the son had been more, and they reference this a

little bit later in the movie, but more geared towards the obvious conflict of LeBron grows up with very little, works his way to the top. He sort of alludes to it, but it's really not what it's about with the son. He's also in the last 15 minutes of the movie. And I've heard LeBron in interviews talk very earnestly

about the difficulty of raising kids who now have so much money and also his name and all of this stuff. That's a conflict that I'm not saying LeBron would have been amazing, but I imagine he might have been able to play it off a little better than he did his son being a

genius video game designer and greatest of all time. This is the movie's huge problem. I was saying this before I put it, Rick. The son is obviously should be making video games. He's clearly good at it. There is the movie's huge problem. I was saying this before off mic, but the son is obviously should be making video games. He's clearly good at it. There is a point in the movie. Beyond good. He's beyond good.

He's obviously good. There is a fucking nerd. Like he made a video game. Well, David, beyond that, there are a couple of points in this movie that I think fundamentally break it. One of them is you see that he went with his dad to some fucking all-star game training and had some

device hooked up to his iphone he was used to scan the players damien lillard and make cap them into it right and at that moment you go oh this is a kid who loves video games and programming his game's impressive he bought some expensive device to scan an hour later into the movie, Algy Rhythm says, I'm going to be able to suck human beings into the audience because of your scanning technology, implying that Dom James is the one who built this fucking device

and created his own proprietary technology to make people off of a fucking iPhone? This kid's a billionaire. Here's the problem. It's not even about that. Deep into this movie, Algy Rhythm loudly explains like-

Please call him Mr. Rhythm. Algy says, if we win the game, if you win the game, you get to go home. And if I win the game, I will like delete the Looney Tunes and you're my prisoners forever.

All of these human civilians in the stands are are stuck here in the server for me to what end why why does that do anything for lebron goes to see his son yes this should be the moment where his son's like well you know what fuck you because like you didn't let me you know like where there's anger there instead it sounds like what are you talking about it's just like some fun game just go enjoy yourself like come on we're gonna play basketball there's no there. Instead, it sounds like, what are you talking about? It's just like some fun game. Just go enjoy yourself. Like, come on, we're going to play basketball. There's no stakes at all.

His son is not aware of the drama. No stakes. And then at the end, he's like, hey, Algyrhythm's mean. I'll go hang out with you. That's it. Like, you know,

because Algyrhythm is mean. The biggest problem with this movie is LeBron has basically like shitty and inscrutable motivations and the ancillary characters have no motivations. Like, particularly, even just a small thing like the basketball players themselves who then have their talents co-opted.

In the first Space Jam, it's done really well. I mean, the scenes with Muggsy, Muggsy with his shrink and all this stuff, and they don't know. Get him in the hospital. It's arguably the funniest stuff in the movie. Yeah, Charles Barkley getting a basketball thrown at him on a park,

and some kid saying you can't play. These aren't those players. These are weird digital monsters based off of those players who have no internal lives. Right.

Even the nerd looks had fucking motivation. The nerd looks had stakes. Yeah, but this doesn't, this has to be because of the way the movie's made, right? Where they were like, shit, we don't have time

to actually bring these people in for sex. But they're in the movie, though, David. I mean, you could even find sex. But they can't have, like, actually done the mocap, right?

It's just. No, no, no, no. It's just CG. But even if you get like, to the extent that they are physically in the film. Yes, they are in the film for a second. They don't have no. But I'm saying like, don't you think like maybe there was a world where they were going to have a B plot and then it's like, shit, we fired the director. The NBA season's starting soon.

We just have them be cartoons as well. Well, there's also this famous thing. Famous. There's this noted thing that they had a really tough time getting any players to do this because of conflicting shoe deals. Absolutely. It was never going to happen.

Players who had different shoe deals were not allowed to do this film because of LeBron's... Except for Clay. Clay does it because he has the Chinese shoes. Remember? That's his sneakers. The Chinese shoe company. I forget what they're called. Oh, okay. He's got his own company?

Clay is endorsed by a Chinese sneaker company. I need to look it up. That's smaller and not a competitor. But is he also endorsed by Nike, additionally? But Anta is obviously just like, hey man, whatever. You want to be in a movie. But like, you can't get Harden.

You can't get, you know, Durant. Well, is Durant Nike? Who's Durant? I think Durant is Nike. Yeah. Durant is definitely Nike. Durant's just like, fuck you. But you can't get Steph because he's underarm.

You can't get Harden because he's Adidas or whatever. Like, right. You can't get those guys. But by the way, I mean, one of the cool things about the first Space Jam is like, it's not like they were like,

oh, is Sean Bradley Nike? You know what I mean? They got interesting players. It was not just purely a branding accident. They had a stranglehold back then, too, though. Everyone was Nike back then. Now all these people have wormed in. But I'm just saying they did not pick the,

they could have picked players with no signature shoe deal as well, and it could have been interesting if they were the right type of character. Well, but this is another interesting thing they did. And, like, James, you and I walked around for a little bit after the movie and we're talking about stuff and rough-drafting our thoughts for this episode, whatever, and you just kept on, you'd say, like,

the thing that the original Space Jam gets right, and I can't believe I keep on trying to, like, talk about the original Space Jam like it's the Maltese Falcon. Like, you're like, it makes the original Space Jam look like a script that should be studied for its perfection in terms of the bare minimum shit

it gets right. I watched the first Space Jam after watching the second Space Jam and it really like, first of all, it felt like a warm bath in comparison to the second one. But it's like a pleasant movie

in comparison to this which is so in your face. As much as I always enjoyed the first Space Jam, it gave me a lot more appreciation for what it's able to pull off just like basic hack hollywood screenwriting where it's like you have someone say this in the first act and it happens in the third act but they but the first space jam was able to fit all of this stuff yeah into a formulaic hollywood movie which is not maybe not so easy well this was the other thing i was gonna say like with the monsters and the nerd lux and whatever right like a you set up the nerd lux as a character you know what's going on there then you set up the players in the real

world right then they steal them and in terms of the selection of the real world players you have like ewing and barkley are like a big fucking a-tier guys right but then part of their like decision making after that is like sean bradley you want a guy who's really tall mugsy bugs you want a guy who's really small like they're casting based on the visuals of what the cartoon monsters are gonna be later in the thing it was gonna be george mears on first like they were thinking about this of, like, having distinct... Well, because, also because it's a basketball movie. Right.

They wanted them to play as opposed to this one where they don't really want anyone to play. They just want it to be this, it's a video game. It's an abstract. And even within,

we were talking about this, one of the frustrating things about this movie is even knowing it's a video game, there are no rules to the video game. Right. They don't outline

any sort of competitive... There's some sort of power-up element. They do not explain the style points. You don't know what... Even if it's style points, you have no idea what a lead is.

What's what? Even the barrier, it's like, can you bounce the ball off it or do people just run into it and then get electrocuted? There's so much logic that just doesn't make sense with how the game works.

But David, you talked me through this at one point where it's like, it like yeah right so much logic that just doesn't make sense with how the game works but david like you talked me through this at one point where it's like oh the the nicknames the forms they have are based on this kind of thing or whatever right in terms of how it actually like plays into the film it's kind of irrelevant right like the the real players that these are based on kind of have nothing to do with anything pretty much and. You're saying wet fire, that guy, that's not his deal? Well, he's one of the Splash Brothers.

He's one of... What is that? Exactly. Well, no, okay. I will say, James, back me up here. Everyone who remotely cares about the NBA

knows about the Splash Brothers. Yes. I think the problem... No, no. I'm not wrong about the Splash Brothers. I'm wrong about that being the reason

why the character is wet fire. There's nothing else you can do with Clay Thompson. I think the problem is not that. Clay Thompson is famous for when a, what was it? Scaffolding collapse. This is incredible.

In New York City, he was caught by like New York Warner, some local TV station being like, not knowing that he was Clay Thompson. He was like in town for a game. And they were like, what happened here? And he was like, well knowing that he was Clay Thompson. He was like in town for a game and they were like, what happened here? And he was like,

well, it looks like the structural integrity. And he like seemed to know the sort of specifics of how scaffolding works. And by the way, it was not at all like, you know,

giving that look of like, do you know who I am? He's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's what happened. He's like,

look, it's always a concern when you're walking. He's kind of like famously dry. That's why. So he's a always a concern when you're walking. He's kind of like famously dry. That's why. So he's a little tough to. Famously dry. Sounds like they got it wrong.

The problem is not that he's wet fire or anything like that, or that people don't know what that means. The problem is that no part of Clay Thompson's basketball game has anything to do with the game that they play. Same with Anthony Davis. Same with him. Anthony Davis at least has wingspan, I will say. But they don't, it doesn't come into play.

I'm aware. I'm aware. How do we score over this wingspan? This is my larger point. This is my larger point. I understand whatever fucking in-jokes these personas are riffing on, but they're all kind of irrelevant, and their personalities don't really come into play. The only guy where I would argue actually has any impact on the game is Kronos, right?

Where they're like setting up this fucking thing of him fucking with time. Otherwise, all the powers they have are just like, well, I don't know. The game is rigged. They can't win anyway.

This doesn't make them better or worse players in its own bizarre way. The Looney Tunes are also like fucking beholden to no rules. This is an honest question. I mean, I know that there's

some part of this movie that is just a sign of the times in that like, okay, it's like, yeah, we included like video games and like a lot of little sound bites. And it's sort of, there is something very like modern internet about the way the short bursts are going. But is also what it's

saying that like young people actually don't really care about basketball either? Fundamentals. The fundamental. What happened to the fundamentals? that like young people actually don't really care about basketball either fundamentals the fundamental what happened to the fundamental that is true okay yeah look again i can't believe i'm the defender of the stupid logic of this movie that is true all they're always complaining about how basketball players spend too much time playing basketball video games now and obsessing over their 2k rating and all that but like fundamentally right the conflict the only way i could zero in on the latter half of this movie because i was truly

like desperate by the lab you saw this in a screening room right i started in the amc lincoln square in a screening you did i just want to say because you told me that's funny uh this was your first movie back from paternity leave this was your first movie back from paternity leave. This was your first movie in six months, right? And it like shows up in your work slack or the spreadsheet, whatever they put in, they put you in to do Space Jam. And you reach out to Warner Brothers and go like, hey, they want me to do Space Jam. And their response was

like, there's a screening in two hours if you can make it great. If not, you don't get to see the movie. Warner Brothers was so uninterested in critics seeing this, by and large. They were kind of like, it's Monday or whatever. Like, nothing. You're not going to get a link. But was it same day?

They were like, you have to be able to get there today. It was that day. It was that day. They had one screening. But in the latter half of the movie, the moral of the story, right, is like, he should stop trying to teach the Looney Tunes how to, like, screen and roll, right? He just needs to let them all have fun like this to let everyone be who they are this game is designed

for people to have fun so he needs to loosen up right and like so I of course thought of his famous tweet to Kevin Love where he did not say Kevin Love's name but you know what I'm talking about some players need to either fit in or fit out right which he tweeted the first year and everyone's like LeBron is fucking playing mind games

with Kevin Love his new teammate on twitter like what is this where clearly lebron was like i don't get this guy he's casual he's not like me he's not like hyper competitive he's right like that was sort of the underlying thing right right yes and kairi too like he was also pissed off at kairi yeah i probably and knowing what we know now had a less of a read on Kyrie as we all do you know as Kevin Love I think he really like pinpointed as like this guy's like got it taught you know he was like I don't understand like you're here you're with me we could win a title like how right like and it clearly what happened with that team was like LeBron came in and was like I am LeBron James god of basketball I have two rings now I you know doesn't everyone want to listen to me yeah I'm the king I just went it was just in Miami I was just under Pat Riley like learned now I'm here to tell everyone about

how basketball works and everyone's like huh well there's also that famous moment where LeBron said something about uh being sort of like a father figure to Kyrie. And they interviewed Kyrie about it. He was like, I have a dad. Right, right, right. That kind of rolls. Yes, and like LeBron, I think has acknowledged, like he did have to learn to be like, okay, people don't just want to like hear my drops of wisdom and like hear how to play the game for me.

Right, but by the way, I feel like this movie is kind of like doing a very similar fucking thing to the audience, honestly, about like, yo, I'm LeBron, like sit down, similar fucking thing to the audience, honestly, about like, you know, I'm LeBron, like sit down two hours of LeBron. Let me tell you about all the great shit I did in my career, in my life. To let go and let someone else construct that narrative around him in a way he would not have the perspective to do. Right. Can I also say, I mean, talking about all of this, like the main image I think of with LeBron now, and I know it's

recency bias and also this is someone who like doesn't follow sports and only sees these things when they go viral on twitter but the famous fucking photo of lebron like this to his teammates after they fucked up the play well it was to be fair maybe the worst the worst individual it was i have watched the clip it's the only basketball footage i've watched in the last 10 years. Even I understand that's a horrible play. Because it wasn't just that. It was LeBron had just given the most magnificent performance any basketball player had ever given. Sure.

He had defeated Steph Curry. And their margin for error in that. Nothing. It was non-existent. I mean, they could not have even like, and then for JR to just basically like, yeah. Huh? And then you're like, oh, I didn't. And LeBron's clearly like, now I have to defeat Steph four more times.

I just beat him and you lost it. But that's like the amount of emotion in the photo. It was incredible. He's so expressive in that photo. It like tells such a complete story. And the fact that that is directed at his own team, you are correct that that's what this movie should dramatically be digging into. you are correct that that's what this movie should dramatically be digging into. Kind of like,

you know, cause like he's leading on the tunes and then eventually he realizes like, I need to loosen up with them much as I do with my own son. Like that's the only arc that's in the movie. It's the same thing it does with the son. It's the same thing it does, first of all, with like, you know,

uh, leaving the, leaving Cleveland. It's the same thing it does, um, with the son, like not having to work for things where it's like, it doesn't set any of it up.

And then it just references it in the second half once. It's like, that's enough. They reference things in resolving them that they have not properly set up within the confines of the movie. A god awful movie. I mean, fundamentally. Right. It's a bowl of dump it. It's so shitty.

But, like, here's a good example. Right. I feel like I mean you said this James watching it like there were a lot of comments you kind of turned to me

in the movie as you were like doing the math in real time yeah and I think you said this during the film where you were like you realize

what a difference it makes that you're actually seeing like a court in the original movie yes both in the training and in the final game that it's like,

A, I find something weirdly claustrophobic about the visual of the final game where it's like green grass around all of them and people standing right on the sidelines.

It feels more hermetic and like, it feels more like a green screen even though it is, in theory, a more expansive, deeper sort of digital background that they've created versus it being like in an arena. But also that when LeBron's training them, he's training them in Marvin the Martian spaceship. They're not playing on a court.

The original movie has shit where they're like they get this fucking acme like gymnasium. Right. And they're like working shit out. And you get gymnasium right and they're like working shit out and you get the sense even though it's not some fucking rocky for training montage that jordan has like really worked to try to get the tunes into shape well and when they show up they're good like they're good at what they do and they're playing the game of basketball where if you score basket it's two points not and the moment other rules are a little different right and you can stretch or whatever the other thing the monsters also are a little different. Right. And you can stretch or whatever.

And the other thing, the monsters also aren't super powered. This is another thing. They're really big and they're really mean and they're very tough. Right.

But they don't have cartoon powers. Looney Tunes are able to later come in with the cartoon powers and use them to their advantage. Right. Well, and the other thing

that we talked about too is that the villain in the first Space Jam is sort of like this Kim Jong-il figure. Huge connection. Thank you, James. Yes, he's evil and wants to connect. But he wants to do it about too is that the villain in the first space jam is sort of like this kim jung il figure huge connection thank you yes he's evil and wants to kid us but he wants to do it because he he like cares about like basketball and like wants these people to play basketball for him there's a basis in reality as insane as it is swag hammer actually like no but there is a basis in reality for

algorithm but it's a it's a more chilling, it's just that algorithm is like, look, I have solved culture. I am the algorithm. I have decided that if LeBron went to fucking Hogwarts, that would be good. And when he's told no, he's like, alright. Of course, but the basketball algorithm has nothing to do with it.

And that's the thing. The basketball has nothing to do with it. So then just take them. Why are you playing this game of basketball? You understand in the first one, at least, there's some like, okay, the game of basketball is like, there's some reverence for the game of basketball where it's like, okay, if we can beat them, we can have them. You know what I mean? Whereas like Algae Rhythm, like just still, if you want to delete these fucking people,

what's stopping you? You're completely, you know, it doesn't make any sense. I don't think they delete you anyway. I've heard that if you say server verse 20 times, it becomes a thing. It becomes a thing. It's also just bananas that, I mean, and I'm sure millions of people pointed this out,

but the movie begins with LeBron being pitched this movie and he's like, this is an awful idea. David, David, David, David, David. I have to correct you here because this is my biggest gripe with the entire film. They do not pitch him this movie. They pitch him Warner's 3000, which is this stupid fucking service

where they're saying, we have this whole catalog. Yes, they will digitize him and then put him into movies. And we'll put you into pre-existing movies because your social media following is so big that that will like add value to our back catalog. Right.

Here's the biggest fucking question about this movie and the thing I think that is ruinous in this premise. Because I think this is a cursed movie. I think trying to make another Space Jam is a bad idea. It doesn't make cultural sense.

The only reason to do it, the only reason for this movie to exist is because LeBron is competing in his mind with the legacy of Jordan. Right? That he feels like that's the thing I have to do to prove I'm always going to be in conversation

about who is the greatest of all time and what my influence is. And if I don't do this big cultural thing that Jordan did, he's going to have that up on me, right? I do think that it's sort of irresistible to him, right? Yes. Even though it's also kind of a like, right, can you possibly... The challenge of it. Well, it's the same thing as I was saying that it's sort of a real feeling of insecurity with this film,

but David, do you remember after the... I believe it was after the Cavs beat the Warriors in the finals, LeBron was on The Shop, and he had that moment where he said, like, I forget if he was talking about the block or just the win in general, and he sort of said, that was

when I realized that I'm the greatest ever. And there was a, there was, it's like, whether or not that's true, you can argue, but there was such an insecurity to like feeling the need to come out and say that, that Michael Jordan never would have done. Michael Jordan to this day still sort of laughs at the question of whether or not he's the greatest ever. Cause he's, and I'm not just saying, oh, we love Jordan so much, but think that also yes comes through in the film yes you know that it's like i will say when did the last dance start when the wheels start moving on the last dance after the block michael jordan definitely smelled it in the air and was like i

need to burnish my legacy again because now i'm the cartoon hitler mustache shitty mba owner that i am and i need to remind a whole new generation like and it worked better than even he could have imagined you watch last dance and you're like wow jordan is such a fucking fascinating figure and also this guy is so good at being on camera he's so good how many fucking memes did the last dance the thing is create when they're when let's imagine one day there's a lebron last dance like 20 years from now yeah i do think he could be good on camera if he just actually let let go you know and maybe he will like 20 years later right but there's something about the sort of i don't give a fuck jordan thing in both timelines when you're watching

the archive footage and the presentation everything everything about him is captivating. Well, and that's a good point, too. Like we were talking about LeBron's, you know, sort of CEO, entrepreneur angle that he really sells. And I have no problem with LeBron making absolutely as much money as he possibly can. But there's an important point to be made, which is Michael Jordan was never interested in that stuff and made every bit as much money as LeBron. Yes. And that LeBron is not, LeBron's entrepreneurship is not, yes, it's like, it's a way to make

money, but it's also a way that he's presenting himself to the public. Like, like if, like you can make LeBron, I would, I think LeBron could make every bit as much money as he's made. Yeah. You know, with it, if he didn't care about that stuff at all. But it is that disruptor culture thing of like, i want to show that i can succeed in every field i want to do all this stuff which also makes him too knowable like we feel like we know too much about this fucking guy it's sort of true but also like if we saw a clip of lebron and the shop kind of has this

but even still the shop is obviously you know soft, soft focus in its way. But like, if, if I saw LeBron like talking shit, it would be kind of like, Oh, like, cause I'm sure of course he does. Right. Like on the bus.

Right. You'd be like, well, we never see this. There's all kinds of stories also about how much LeBron disliked, not personally, but disliked Steph Curry. Well,

LeBron clearly hated Steph because it was like, how can this guy who is clearly in every way worse than me as an athlete yes not that he's steph is obviously great like be beating me like you know not just that but i think lebron also had this feeling of like you guys really think this is this guy's better than me like are you kidding me this is horseshit i can shoot objectively obviously you are a better basketball player than steph curry but like that didn't you know steph represented something completely different. He was accessible and kids love him and it's like

a kid can imagine shooting a basketball. He can't imagine being a 6'9 tree and you touch him, it's like a rock. Steph had the wholesome family thing that LeBron also had. Yeah, but he was kind of a little more authentic with it or whatever because his kid was cute. Yeah, and also

people always in the NBA, have always part of what they've presented about Steph is he grew up rich. Steph grew up rich. And he was just this sort of like, son of a basketball player. Preppy kind of, yeah. But doesn't this get back to the fantasy point where it's like, LeBron wants to be beloved in that LeBron, you constantly feel that he's thinking

about how people view him. And he's frustrated by people who just kind of like, are comfortable in their own skin and have whatever sort of adoration they have. You know, the first Space Jam sort of went back. What year did that come out?

96? Okay, so it goes back in time a little to tell the baseball story, right? Yes. And this is another huge thing. I'm sorry, because I want to make sure

I don't forget this. Another huge thing is, and Last I want to make sure I don't forget this another huge thing is and Last Dance made me realize this timeline the way I never did before he signs on to do Space Jam post baseball pre rejoining the NBA

he has a lot of time to focus on that movie they famously build him the court so he can like start getting in shape again. But he's not playing basketball professionally at the time he's working on the movie that he rejoins. He's dominant

again. The movie occupies the space of like the dark age of Jordan being out of the NBA and comes back when he's triumphant. You know? Like the summer of his fourth time. Whereas LeBron is animated for 70% of this movie because there's only so much time you can devote to this movie.

But this movie could have gone back in time as well and told a different story about LeBron that was not sort of... The story is firmly post-triumph. And there were, as there are with all athletes, road bumps in LeBron's career that they could... This could have been a post-decision movie. Post-decision would be kind of interesting, obviously. You want him on the back of his heels in the way that Jordan is

I don't disagree with any of this again of course also the movie is dog shit it's the looney tune stuff you know what I mean like there's other problems this is my question talking about fundamental curse premise right when you get to the big scene where algae rhythm is pitching warner's 3000 sure and this ties into james's thing about silverman's there steven young academy award nominee steven young uh this gets back to james's question about like swack hammer feeling like there's a weird basis in reality there and you understand why the movie is about basketball beyond that beyond that right the first space jam for as fucking sweaty a premise as it is as much as it's cooked in a lab by fucking advertising agents and whatever right they

actually did like let's just like try to figure out how to justify this where there is the chain of logic of like the looney tunes are beloved they live in the center of the planet they are known stars but also they exist as living creatures right in their tune world in the core of Earth Swackhammers in space

his theme park is failing they need an attraction kids like Bugs Bunny let's kidnap Bugs Bunny Bugs uses his fucking Bugs logic the way he's good at

fucking tricking people back to Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam, to make the nerd lucks think that, oh, here's a rule book. You're not allowed to kidnap me unless you beat me in a game. What game? And there's the scene

where all the fucking Looney Tunes huddle and they go like, they're short and they have little arms. Basketball. We have to play them in basketball because we'll beat them. They steal the power. Now they're big and strong.

What do we do? We kidnap Michael jordan you at least put it like what the scent the paragraph i just said is insane and demented right but they went through that indefensible really but they did by i understand what they did the beat algorithm goes i want to put you in old movies lebron says that's a stupid idea he is correct that's a stupid idea. He is correct. That's a horrible idea. It unfortunately feels like it's probably where the entertainment industry is going in the next 20 years.

It's a horrible idea. Algae Rhythm cut to Don Cheadle wearing a suit, right? Which later, when they're sucked into the serververse, Dom James goes,

why is the computer a black man? No, no, no. LeBron says it. It's very funny. It's the only good joke. It's one of two laughs I had. What's your second one? The Michael B. Jordan thing made me laugh? No, no, no. LeBron says it. It's very funny. It's the, it's the only good joke. One of two laughs I had. What's your second one?

The Michael B. Jordan thing. Maybe that's good. That's the only good joke. That was, but no, when LeBron said, yeah, the computer's black, which is one of the few lines in this is that feels kind of tossed off or ad-libbed or whatever. It's funny. It's funny. I laugh.

I agree. Why is the computer black? I agree. Now look, we see him inside the computer with Steve, who by the way, I hate Steve. You don't like that guy? What is he?

Is he like a plug? He's the Microsoft paper clip. I know, but like, but what is he physically supposed to represent? What does he look like? I couldn't really,

he's got like two stringy, He has like USB cable hands, but then his head looks like a light bulb. I don't know. I couldn't figure it out. He's got no personality. He's like Morph from fucking Treasure Planet.

If Morph was like... He's a Bobby thing that makes a face. I hate him. He's not great. He's not terrific. I fucking despise him. I don't understand why he exists in this movie. Anyway, we get this like fucking five minute soliloquy from Algorithm just standing

around inside of a server verse wearing like a Canadian tuxedo or whatever, right? That spray painted silver talking to Steve. And I think to myself, why does he have a human form? What, who is he presenting this for? Why is it a human form? And when they do the pitch meeting, he is represented as like an Al Hirschschfeld style cartoon right and i'm like this is who he should be and then when the jameses get sucked in he's like let me take a form that you just have a logic problem with right why are we because so cheetle can go ham that's the reason do the fucking big blue cgi face for one scene before they come in my point is this movie never for me answers the fundamental question which david you said he pitches space

jam no he doesn't this movie never even makes clear if the original space jam exists in this universe which is a horrible horrible decision because the best way to do this horrible dog premise of a movie is here's the algorithm the algorithm is pretty pitch is actually space jam is relativity media we have come up with a computer program that could come up with a hit movie right is here's the algorithm. The algorithm is... This pretty pitch is actually Space Jam. Is Relativity Media. We have come up with a computer program that can come up with a hit movie, right? Sarah Silverman. Oh, fuck.

I'm going to get fired. I need a hit. Computer. Type, type, type, type, type. Paper printout. Do Space Jam with LeBron. Two billion dollars, right? She goes and pitches it.

They bring in LeBron. And he's like, no thanks. Bad idea. Why would I do that? I'm going to compete. I'll fail. Right? Right.

Algorithm is personally wounded because algorithm, a computer, thinks he is an artist, which is actually getting to saying something about the fucking industry, which is like, you have to make creative decisions, not let a computer do it. This computer is like, how dare you insult my creation, sucks them in and goes, you thought this was a bad idea, I'm gonna make you live it. That's why you have to play basketball. The other part of this is, the Looney Tunes

are in the reject world, right? He fucking pulls the lever, I'll send you to the reject world, it's tune world. They go there. So the Looney Tunes no longer live in the core of our Earth. A different reality. You got this wrong in your review, people corrected you, you said they were on a different planet, they're not, they're in the core of our Earth. A different reality. You got this wrong in your review. People corrected you. You said they were on a different planet. They're not.

They're in the core of Earth. Space Jam has a different planet. And I was just like, aren't they on it? That's more on Mountain, though, my friend. That's more on Mountain. Yeah, I'm aware. I don't care. I'm going to be honest with you. I think you should care. This is your Melania Trump moment. I do kind of like the...

Or like is too strong, but right, they have been thrown into Warner Brothers' digital basement because it's like no one cares about the Looney Tunes anymore. So there's something there because this is another thing. Bugs has no fucking arc in this movie.

This is the worst Bugs Bunny has ever been in anything. Bugs Bunny's one of my five favorite movie stars in history. They kill him, so that was good when he died. They kill him and then he comes back five seconds

later and he has somehow found a way to transfer over into our world reborn and nothing is explained i guess you don't like jesus christ's plot arc uh griffin jesus christ didn't exist on a server and then rise in the yes he did jesus christ what does he have to do he's nobody he gathers followers then he dies and then his reborn has got wow i guess you don't like the bible you need to is it's that you you have the the motivation for the loon tunes and then there has to be something lebron is trying to like the idea that what lebron is ultimately getting out of this is that his son doesn't hate him right yeah like i have a story i'll tell the story um the best way to tell the story i'll tell it in a short way, which is around the time right after the decision happened,

I had just graduated high school. One of my best friends from high school, her grandfather owns a hotel or owned a hotel. Okay. So, you know, we were maybe going to go on a trip after we finished high school, a few of us, and there were issues and you said,

why don't we just go to your grandfather's hotel and hang out there? Very privileged story. Yeah. Anyway, so we go to the hotel and this is right after the decision and LeBron James just decided

to sign with the Heat. Big news. People are very angry. South Beach. And looks confused. What's going on, Ben? Let's see where it's going. People are really criticizing LeBron.

For the first time ever. They had criticized, oh, he hadn't won a title. But on a personal level, for the first time ever. Do you know about the decision as a TV special, Ben? He announced he was leaving a team and he was going to go to a new team. on a personal level for the first time ever. Do you know about the decision as a TV special, Ben? As a TV special? He announced he was leaving a team and he was going to go to a new team

and he did it as a one-hour TV special that was like an American Idol result show. All the Cleveland fans were so mad. How could you do this to us? It's been impulative. It's so grandiose. Okay. So we're at the hotel

and we find out LeBron is staying there. This is where he's taken his post. Wait a second. Because I worked at that fucking restaurant where he came after the announcement. Okay. In Connecticut. He drove right to the fucking restaurant. It's on an early episode of our show.

You talk about it. And a orange twist. Okay. Which was so fucking crazy. Him and all his goddamn friends. So this ties in perfectly because, so then I guess, you know,

a few weeks after that, he decides to go on vacation. He's staying at the hotel we're staying at. So, you know, you find out LeBron's staying at your hotel. Obviously you have some dream of like, yeah,

like we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to,

we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to,

we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to,

we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to,

we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, I'm not going to get into all the specifics because it's a long story and doesn't have a huge payoff, but like, we do get to interact with LeBron.

And LeBron to like, you know, I guess it was like five random kids is incredibly like outgoing, spends a lot of time like or not a lot of time, but quality time for LeBron James, like interacting with us. He was generous. He like, you know, bought us some like alcohol and stuff like that anyway lebron got you drinks when you guys were underage yes i'm not saying i'm just saying that's cool like you were like hey lebron can you buy us a six pack if you know i think we were of age at the time in where we were okay oh and i think lebron had like obviously bought in like had bought like 10 bottles of vodka. And he gave us like six of them.

Who knows? Yeah. Anyway, the point. And I don't know. I was picturing LeBron going around the street corner. He was not like, hey, kids, how you doing? And then like, you know. And I always got the sense.

And I don't know if I was putting this on him, which was also another factor because he was so reviled in a lot of corners at that time that this and maybe even unconscious but like lebron was in a mode at that moment of really like just first of all trying to be like very nice to everyone but also you know when you're like famous like that and you're getting criticized just exert your influence in as many small ways as possible as possible leader he wants to be an inspiration in multiple areas. And see these kids, these like random little brats who were staying at this hotel be like, wow, like that's amazing.

You know, which of course we were. Yeah. And like, to me, like that's, like that's, that's what this movie needs. You know what I mean? Just like LeBron at this low point and then you have these, these tunes who are in some way in this tough spot.

Which by the way, the movie sets up that LeBron is like the biggest fucking Looney Tunes fan. He's 14. He's got a Looney Tunes backpack. And he's playing fucking Bugs Bunny on his Game Boy. And then when he meets Bugs Bunny, he's like, oh, wow, Bugs Bunny, you know who I am? Yeah.

All this movie needs is the tunes and LeBron to meet each other at a low moment for both of them. That's a big thing. Where they meet each other. Yes. And that they, you know, somehow by working together they can come out on top

and instead it just doesn't so that even a little bit. It's more like Bugs is leveraging LeBron to draft all of the Looney Tunes rather than Yeah, and LeBron's

there for no reason. He's just there to get out. Like Jordan, yes, he's there. He's trying to get out. Yeah. But he also rediscovers his love for the game of basketball by playing with the tunes the tunes as a collective and jordan both have their own motivations their own stakes and their own arcs in the original film

in this film neither one has either right well the tunes sort of just have to get famous again right that's it but david once again if this movie exists in the universe where the original Space Jam exists and that's what Algorithm's pitching, you immediately improve it 25% because this movie's just ripping off the Jason Segel Muppets where it's like, oh, they're all scattered. We have to go different places to get them together, right? But when LeBron

goes to Toon World and the joke is Warner Brothers, it sucks. They don't know what to do with the fucking Looney Tunes, right? Bugs is alone, has sort of gone crazy, but also is showing no vulnerability, no interiority. He's just doing classic Bugs Bunny bits. He's just being Bugs. By the way, poorly timed and executed.

I would say, right, the bits are funny. There's the one moment where he's crying at the bar. That's his vulnerable moment. But it's also presented as a joke, like when Bugs Bunny accepts an Oscar. You know what I'm saying? When he's like oh thank you thank you like it's all sort of like there is that that's about it sure i'm just saying there's a version of this movie in which he gets sent reject pile you're in looney tunes world right and uh algerhythm has sent him there because the

challenge is you have to remake Space Jam to prove me right. Right. And the Looney Tunes are like, Space Jam, that was the last time we were culturally relevant. That was 25 years ago. And they're talking up like,

I mean, we won that game. We're really good at basketball. And LeBron is trying to train them and realizes they're bad at basketball. Michael Jordan carried that team. I really need to work them into fundamentals. And then he is fucking training them, working too hard to make them play like him.

It's joyless, and he has to learn let them be loony, let them be yourself. Ding, ding, ding, you have LeBron living in the shadow of Michael Jordan. Correct, which is perfect, but he would never do it. Well, how does that end, though? What's the end of that? I'll tell you what the end of that is.

This is the other part of my pitch, okay? A fundamental scene where the movie breaks, beyond repair, is when in the first 15 minutes, LeBron goes into his son's room, sees the game, recognizes. He's good.

He's like, this is good. But introduction. I'm an asshole. I'm a fucking drill sergeant. I'm the great Santini. All I care about is my son playing basketball. Look at my giant house. I don't like coding.

Right. This one son's good. The other one seems to not like it. I don't care. You have to work hard. Right? Then he goes into the room, sees the game, realizes his son is great. There's a glitch.

Oh, that's a bummer. Right. The son opens up to him about the fact that he cares about this. And LeBron's like, okay, well, by the way, you're going to basketball camp. Also, in hastily ADR'd line. Good news. Malik just texted me. We have a WB meeting.

You should come with me. It'll be fun. Right? Yeah. And then they're off. Right? First of all, when LeBron has seen the kid's game, seen his passion for it, sees how good he is at it and still doesn't respect it as a career choice,

he becomes an asshole beyond repair. The obvious hack version of this movie is LeBron does not realize what the kid's passion is. That he's been naive, he's been ignorant, that there's a point in the third act where they're in the game and he goes, oh my god, you built all of this? I never realized you were so good.

I understand your passion now. That should come later. That should come later. Right, where he actually realizes it's more than just a dumb video game. He cannot feign ignorance because he knows what it is

and he understands the passion. It also makes zero sense that the son only proudly announces at the Warner Brothers meeting to two cynical execs he's just met, hey, have you heard of E3? I'm going to that camp

next weekend. A conversation I've never broached with my father. Right, but I'll do it now. Yeah, look. And then that little bit where he's like, you're not going to that camp next weekend. A conversation I've never broached with my father. Right, but I'll do it now. Yeah, look. And then that little bit where he's like, you're not going to the camp. Like, that is really one of the more bare moments.

So, David, here's my fix and how this thing fucking bails itself out, right? And how you can have some sort of ending with this movie that's all about, in the shadow, trying in vain to recreate Space Jam, right? Whether it's video games, or it's the kid is a writer, or he wants to be a comic artist,

he's in some creative field, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the kid, as James said, is more than anything, living in the shadow of his father. He is like LeBron James Jr. Everyone views him- There's an argument for making the main character LeBron James Jr.

the actual LeBron James Jr. But anyway. But he plays basketball, right? He does. But he is burdened with the name LeBron James Jr. Oh, I get it. By the way, another thing LeBron has candidly spoke about publicly. He's like, I wasn't sure if I wanted to give him my name.

Because, right, it's intense. Right. And we're talking about the kids are growing up very different than he did. You know, his work ethic, whatever. Are they privileged? Are they burdened by by this like all this sort of shit the kid is some sort of creative right you pick your fucking field or medium he could be building a video game or whatever uh he is embarrassed about the fact that he wants his dad to think he likes basketball because his dad so badly wants him to play basketball but he secretly loves this other thing, right?

They pitch the thing. LeBron brings the kid to the meeting. He goes in there. The kid is like bummed out at the fact that this is such a cynical exercise, right? Because he's like an artist. He wants to tell his own stories, his own characters, whatever the fuck it is.

And the lesson that the kid teaches LeBron is you shouldn't try to do what everyone's done before and try to outdo those people. You should try to be your own person. I can't be LeBron's son. I don't want to be the LeBron James of video games. I want to be the Dom James of video games. You want to create, dare I say it, a new legacy.

And the end of the movie is them being like, this is a fucked endeavor. We shouldn't even be playing basketball. And LeBron isn't like Looney Tunes, you should play basketball Looney style. He's like, what do you want to do? You used to be fucking movie stars. Why are we replicating your movie from 25 years ago?

Let you be Looney again. And the fucking end of it is they let the Looney Tunes just be insane and LeBron goes through the Looney Tunes greatest hits. What you're pitching is the Muppets, the Seagull Muppets. And what the movie is, is Hook. Right. The movie is basically the plot of Hook, which is dad doesn't have time for his kids.

His son gets abducted by a villain. And the villain's like, I'll be your dad. I'll be your encouraging dad. It should be about LeBron being obsessed with being Jordan and the Looney Tunes being obsessed with trying to replicate the success of Space Jam and Algorithm being obsessed with the fact that movies are math and he can figure out the business.

And at the end of it, they're like, fuck the game. And the way they defeat the fucking goon squad or whatever isn't by beating them in basketball with arbitrary rules that don't matter. It's by going like, Looney Tunes, let's fucking go bugs on their ass. Paint the thing on the wall and have them run into it.

You know, like put them in our game. Duck season, rabbit season. Do the greatest hits of Looney Tunes, but do it to knock out these villains and eliminate them as physical threats. The game doesn't matter. You have to create a new legacy. LeBron understands that his son has this passion to this other thing. That's fine. That's the version

of this dog shit movie that's at least functional. Now there's an argument that maybe at one point there was more of that happening and God knows. The Terrence Dance of it all. Right, like, you know, the whole thing got retooled. There's also the other problem that Warner Brothers is so intent on like, well, let's use this to

like fucking advertise Warner Brothers and be the next Disney. I was going to ask that question. Do you think that, I mean, I know that that's what they were trying to do with, you know, having him drive through all these different movies. I mean, is this an effective ad for

any of those properties? I mean, is anyone I mean, no. I don't know. I mean, I loved it. I love IP. You like the IP surprises, right? Oh, yeah. I think falling through IP seems like fucking cool as hell. I've always wanted to do that.

James, I tease this for you. This is the big thing they're trying to do. The thing that everyone else, every other studio is jealous of is that common lay people know what Disney owns and what they don't. Disney has clear branding. They've done decades of work. Right. You know. They had that for a century,

right? Everyone knows which movies are classically Disney movies, but they also know that Disney owns Pixar and Disney owns Marvel and Disney owns Star Wars and that's the umbrella. And Warner Brothers

is like, last year's HBO Max launch was all about these fucking posters where it's like Bada Bing and it's Tony Soprano and Chandler Bing. Right? Being like,

we have these three things. It's Wizard of Oz and Big Bang Theory and fucking Adventure Time. And it's horrible because it's like, right. But that's the whole point. That's what this movie's trying to do.

They're just trying to remind you this is what Warner Brothers owns. All of these things. And the reason it's weird too is you're combining these very adult movies. Yeah, it's like The Matrix. I mean. That's combining these very adult movies. It's like the matrix. I mean,

that's the whole thing with Disney. It's like Disney made has done what it's done, but it's done that by sacrificing the rest of it. Very narrow silos. And then Warner brothers is like, Ooh, can we be that narrow? And like someone,

right. Cause someone on Matt patches was saying like, Oh, this shows how little of an impact Warner brothers has made. Like the, and I'm like, no, they just did other movies that won't fit into this. Patches' point was that Fury Road is the only thing from the last 20 years that made it into the movie. And your point was, like, they've had, like, 10 major Christopher Nolan movies.

Yeah, you know, Ocean's movies, Clint Eastwood movies. Right. There's a lot of shit that they're not touching. But it's, like, they're looking for shiny brand properties. They're looking for that because now everything's just about shareholders and what is proprietarily yours. This is like an upfront. It's an upfront

to just remind you like we're sitting on this catalog. So one reason I thought this movie was better than it because I thought it was going to be so much of that. Going through. None of the IP characters like talk. They're just not. It's really None of the IP characters hawk. It's really like a 10-minute sequence in total. Right.

And then them just being featured extras. I thought... So I posted a picture of LeBron as Robin and Bugs as Batman. So that's one sequence. There's Casablanca with Yosemite Sand. Fury Road. They piss Superman off, by the Fury road. They piss Superman off. They do piss Superman off.

He gets so sad. I argued that was the high point of the movie on a very relative scale because it was nice to see like Brute's Tim style artwork and then approximate it different. So there's just to go through it all before I reveal what my favorite was. There's Casablanca. There's Harry Potter where LeBron is like. Casablanca. I think the universe of Casablanca should be explored further.

I think we should have a TV series. It's one of my favorite franchises. Casablanca was asking to be... By the way, Ben, there was an 80s Casablanca TV series that was, as you would expect, a notorious disaster. Like a network Casablanca TV show that ran for six episodes and people were irate. Does he say, here's looking at you, kid, at the

end of every episode? He punches through the Looney Tunes rings, Porky Pig style, and that's what he says. So there's Foghorn Leghorn Rides a Dragon for Game of Thrones. There's The Matrix, which we've all seen the clip.

Even if you haven't watched it with Granny. Is there anything I'm forgetting here? I don't think so. I think those are the main ones, right? Oh, no. They go into the Wonder Woman comic book. There's the rock bottom Wonder Woman sequence, which is, I find, just so insulting.

Why can't she be funny? Like, Warner Brothers has fun with everyone else, but it's like, well, no, Wonder Woman and Lola can't be funny because they're like inspirational figures. It's like, fuck off, have some fun. It bumps me out. She's like talking about how Lola's an Amazon.

Get out of here. A big problem with this movie is everything is a reference, right? There's nothing, there's so little original. Even the jokes are often just references to like LeBron, like the Taco Tuesday Instagram or stuff like that. And so it's the same with the Wonder Woman thing where it's basically a reference to a political point they're trying to make, but there's nothing actually going on within the movie.

But it's also, it's a recreation. It feels largely like a recreation of the opening of Wonder Woman 1984, right? Yeah, the games. But instead they make it that they go inside a comic book, which is like a whole other thing this movie's not tapping into, which is like, so is any media in the server first? That's a fair question. I mean, people can be digitized. They pick a style that does not look like a whole other thing this movie's not tapping into which is like so is any media in the server it's a fair question i mean people can be digitized they pick a style that does not look

like a comic book right like they give it dots but otherwise it looks like fucking just the same garbage tom and jerry straight to video movie animation so patronizing that lola can't be funny apart from little this is this is what i want to say no no no dawson because she does examine films i want to say this two second thing because this is one of those things that like faux controversy went viral, right? Malcolm D. Lee was like, I watched the original movie,

which by the way, he only saw after they offered him this sequel. He doesn't like Space Jam. Two weeks after the actual visionary director Terrence Nance got fired, he watched it in a weekend.

He was on set two days later. He did an interview recently with the Great Lights Cameron Jackson where he said like... He likes Looney Tunes. He seems to have no interest in... I've never seen it.

Space Jam. But he, in the Lights Camera Jackson interview, said like, we had a Looney Tunes expert on set which was so helpful because I was able to ask them the tough questions at any time like, is Tweety a boy or a girl?

And what is Tweety's thing? Why do we find Tweety funny? What's her or his game? What is Tweety's...? Why do we find Tweety funny? What's her or his game? What is Tweety's? It doesn't matter. Tweety's game is... No, I don't need to get into Tweety's game. Okay, Tweety's a boy.

Yeah, I know what Tweety's game is. Tweety's a boy, but Looney Tunes had no female characters pre-Lola of any significance, so they would make Tweety the girl character for merchandise because Tweety was cute. Tweety's cute. And that created gender

confusion. But also maybe Tweety's fluid. I don't want to box Tweety in. I haven't talked to Tweety. Tweety's not a guest. Tweety is whoever they feel comfortable as. What I was going to say is that he does this interview where he was like, I watched the movie with my daughters and was like,

holy fucking shit. Lola is so sexualized in this movie. She's just girl bunny with tits. They're playing like you know, woo, woo, woo, moomia music. The whole thing's about the fact that Bugs has the hots for her and she's able to seduce all the other monsters on the court or whatever. She has no personality. Her game is just that she's like

Jessica Rabbit, right? And he was like, it's 2021, we should move past this. What they did was just remove the sexuality as a game and left her with nothing yeah she's just other than like level-headed she's got nothing going on there's no fucking character here she has five lines in the movie they are as i quoted just things like way to go lebron right it's a lot of that well and it's like the idea being that the the alternative to a sexualized lola bunny is basically like an activist in some sense, right?

Like a stoic activist. We're all just supposed to be like. Yeah, like not a person or a character, but just like. But here's what I want to say. Yes. I thought the Mad Max thing was funny. I do too. I think that.

I think that is absolutely unquestionably the high point of the ip can i tell you what i like about it wiley coyote looked fucking cool it looks cool it actually uses a looney tunes joke thank you that melds with the thing it's you know him writing witness me and all that david i have a question though you you said that this movie was a little bit better than you expected because you expected it to be such an IP fest that you couldn't watch it. Didn't you find the IP section to be far less painful than the rest of the movie?

Because I did very clearly found it much less painful. I would have watched 30 minutes of it. That's a fair argument. If it was at the Mad Max level. You're right. The argument is like, in a way, is it, should there be more because they actually it's not good but it's like you could have done a full seagull muppets where you're

like actually taking the time to recollect them rather than doing it in a montage i i think you're dead on that not only does the uh mad max section have actual looney tunes gags i also thought lebron looked good in like the mohawk and so i like that he kind of like stepped up for that it's nice that there's the style exercise which i argue matrix is the only one where they kind of come close to doing this where it's like we're replicating the filmmaking of the movie right like there's like an adaption of style and how the looney tunes fit into it and all that sort of shit but it also is that's the only pairing that makes sense where you're like if wiley coyote and roadrunner had to go that's

where they would go something that's why i hated the superman one where i'm like why is daffy in this this makes no sense also daffy isn't superman like it doesn't make any sense right most of it like why is yosemite sam well because his name is sam fuck all um his name is like so when terence nance one of the few things he shot before they fired him. Was the Casablanca sequence. Was Casablanca, but he did it with Pepe Le Pew instead, which is when Pepe Le Pew was cut out of the movie. But more thematically appropriate. Yeah, because he's the fucking romantic. And he smokes or whatever, you know, in his, right. Right.

But you were like, why is Granny in the Matrix? Like, this is so arbitrary. Oh, Granny in the Matrix because it's comedy gold. Here's another. The thing about Granny is she sucks. So Granny is what? She's sylvestron's tweety birds owner her game is that she's oblivious and she doesn't realize this violence is happening and they turn her into rapping granny from the wedding singer and she and she works well in the

first one because it's like way night go sit next to granny you know who's who's got the joke is that she's this like boring quaint old lady and. And then this, the joke is they're like, isn't it funny when old ladies do things that old ladies don't really do? Which is like, that joke was run to the ground in 1998. It sure was. It's never been part of this character. And she has so much screen time in this movie. She's got a lot.

Like Granny does more than Taz does, which I have to imagine is once again a Yas Queen thing where they're like, we only have two female characters. You don't, it may have been some fucking algorithm thing in its way right where like it must have tested in some way ranny like move merch maybe no but maybe it was just like granny did great numbers when we tested 20 minutes of footage or whatever i don't know but it just feels that way right that's the other massive problem is that the the villain in this film is an algorithm. And yet the film- The film is made by an algorithm

and it's recursive, yes. And then nothing to say. The film kind of proves him right. Like the film opening to $32 million is like, I guess the algorithm wins. Well, here's one thing though. And part of me saying it wasn't as bad as I thought. I really thought there was gonna be no Looney Tunes.

They are kind of all over the movie. Now, I don't think any of it is that successful. David, I think they're all over the movie in as much as there's IP all over the movie standing in the stands. None of them work. None of their games really... I mean, there's like... But they at least have sequence. I thought they weren't going to.

You know, there's that middle where they're like doing bits and they're, you know... I disagree on this David when you say I'm just like literal plot time David when you say it's better than nothing they're just there the whole time no there's this whole sequence in the gym where they're all doing they all get first of all it's not the gym it's the spaceship

and he's on the fucking whiteboard and that's one montage that's also part of them like getting collected that lasts for like two minutes no it's longer than that but it's not David when you say it's better than you expected, do you just mean as it's better as an exercise in Hollywood corporatism than you thought or that it's actually a better movie than you thought?

I thought the whole thing was going to be LeBron saying, hi, insert name of Warner Brothers character, as they go from like a place to place. But then you're also saying that's the only stuff that worked on a relative scale that had any sort of energy to it. No, I don't hate the game. Even though the game

makes no sense. Oh, the game is so boring. Because I kind of locked into the Kevin Love thing. I was like, okay, so this is about LeBron having to loosen up. Okay, I can grapple

with those things. Can I point out a weird thing about the game? I also like moments in the game where he's like, we got to switch on D and I'm like, against a water man?

A man who can stop time. It's irrelevant. That's a great strategy. That was a great moment too, because he says that at the end of the, I think it's the last play where he's like, are we switching everything? Yeah, he says it on the last play,

which is like, at this point, isn't it like you have to do like a reverse, you know, fucking granny slam and get a thousand points or whatever the stupid rules are it would have been amazing if on on the last play the uh what was he i didn't even know what the villain team is called what are they the goon squad okay if the goon squad had run just like a traditional spread pick and roll like trying to find trying to find that corner three he's like through the screens like they just finally like actually play basketball there's that oh god it's so it is so grim uh the the just the

lagoon squad i hate them what do you guys think of cheetles before because like cheetle is obviously kind of like being given limitless space and he's like okay i'll fill it like i'll just go as big as i can because what else am i like this is not calling for subtlety right i can't believe i'm gonna say this i feel like he could have gone bigger no to be fair griff you have to acknowledge at one point he grows he gets big it's large he gets band size yeah he gets huge and with like scorpion king level cgi weird. Why is his face wrong? It's creepy. Right. You think he could have gone bigger.

Yeah. Look, I think he could have gone bigger, but I think this is another fundamental failing of the movie that you've walked me into. Okay. We're talking about LeBron, unfortunately being the ultimate auteur of this movie because they hired a fucking weird artsy guy and then immediately got terrified, fired him off, hired Malcolm D. Lee, who just was like a fucking babysitter on this thing right like i hate this movie i like most of malcolm d lee's filmography he's a guy i defend i cannot really ding him for this at all he must have it's

marching orders this thing's on rails you have to just keep it on rails lebron has to be done in eight weeks or whatever right whatever um but uh But I think if you're talking about the relative success, I'm talking creatively of the first movie, why it is watchable, a lot of credit has to go to Ivan Reitman. He's there producing. And to the executives understand, Ivan Reitman was very hands-on with that movie.

In a lot of ways with the uncredited director, you have the animation directors, you have Joe Pica doing live action. Reitman is overseeing both and is also like very hands-on on both and is the guy

who is making those two things fit together. He's kind of the ultimate auteur of that movie, weirdly enough as it is. I've heard he was a very smart businessman. Like above,

I think, you know, I like him as a filmmaker, but he's, working with him, you realize more than anything, this guy's a smart businessman. Like, he understands the business of movies

and how to work around people and stars and understand what the audience wants to see and all that other shit. But also, here's a guy with fucking comedy bonafides.

He's gonna make sure that the Looney Tunes are funny. He's also gonna call in favors and get Wayne Knight and Bill Murray in this movie. So you have ringers who are- Well, you have ringers.

Well, you have Lil Rel. You have Lil Rel who should have been playing the fucking agent character rather than commentate. He's an actor who I realized was in Atlanta and was very good. I didn't understand who he was in this movie, but he was kind of funny. But I'm like, that should be Lil Rel. That should be a space where you bring in Lil Rel and go, Lil Rel, improvise as much as you want, come up with anything. Where does that go? Did we see Chris Davis in that off-Broadway Jack Johnson play at Lincoln Center?

Did he play Jack Johnson? I did not see that with you. Oh, okay. You did see it, though. I did. Okay. Yes. That might have been him.

Okay. I think that might have been him. I think he's a fine actor. I think you need to hire someone who is literally like in a Bill Murray zone, right? I mean, as hackneyed as it is, you need to hire like a comedian first and foremost because hiring Don Cheadle to play Algorithm is like, you're not hiring him for gravitas here, right?

You're not hiring him even in like a Danny DeVito swag hammer kind of way. He's not playing menacing. And if the bit's gonna be that he's this like fucking cyber Beetlejuice who can transform into anything and make anything go off, then what you should be doing what you should be doing is getting a

comedian in front of a green screen and just going, like, go wild. Do funny things. Do fucking anything you want. Make jokes about LeBron. Whatever. Cheadle's working as hard as he can to make this work. It is depressing. I feel like we talked about this in a recent episode. Maybe Rosewood. You look at Cheadle's career, hard as he can to make this work. It is depressing. I feel like we talked about this in a recent episode, maybe Rosewood.

You look at Cheadle's career, right? And from like 2012 on, the last eight or nine years, it's pretty much just 15 Marvel appearances, two Showtime series, and he directs a Miles Davis movie. He like has not been in another. That's why it's so good to see him in no sudden move

yeah within but industry in a nutshell within one week hbo max puts up a soderbergh movie that was produced for like a fucking dollar with 30 actors who were so desperate to be in a real fucking thing right that like great let all show up yeah right and she'll gets like a real fucking role and the space jam movie right that's cheetle's second non-marvel film role in six years since miles ahead so yeah and i feel like already no one's talking about no sudden move and even if it's only out of like uh disgust everyone's thinking about space jam he is also going to be in the no bomb back white noise which is exciting happy he seems to be doing right he seems to be kind of.

Because he's one of our best actors and kind of just got sucked into Showtime and Marvel. He's working his hardest and I would argue he... Is he the best thing in the movie? Is he the best performance in the movie? By default? Probably. Maybe Sarah Silverman?

Yeah, I kind of agree with you. What Harris does okay with a sort of like, but he might still be the third best. Martin Green is very talented. This is obviously a shit role.

She actually plays it like there's something to care about. Right. She's trying to have some stakes there. She's his wife. It's like an incredible actor. She's a very good actor um yeah i don't know yeah i don't know yeah dame lillard is pretty good i mean marvin the russian is kind of fun for a little bit there i kind of could have done with more marvin he doesn't he's he is stuck on toon world because they take his ship but then he comes back and they keep dropping the thing on his head.

It's so stupid. He was the referee in the original movie because I guess the idea is he was always kind of antagonistic to the Loot Tunes. But then also Yosemite Sam and Fudd are playing with them. The referee in this movie was... Fuck, I forgot his name. Steve. Steve. I hate him.

His name is Steve. The little guy. No, it's Pete. Well, wait. Is it Steve? His name is Steve. The little guy. No, it's Pete. Oh, is it? Yeah. You're mad about that? It's even worse somehow. I don't know why.

Is it? I don't think it's worse. I like that less. What was I going to say, though? Yes, they do so little with Marvin. I feel like they use the tunes so poorly in general. Oh, this is what I was going to say. Why is Daffy the coach? Why do they immediately...

His little tie. Daffy just immediately goes, I'm going to be the coach. Right. Right? And then I'm like, okay, interesting. What's the comedic take on this? Nothing.

He gets to do a couple lines. He does the Bob Knight, right? He wears the red sweater and right? Is that what his big, he wears the red sweater and throws the, I'm sorry, which is also weirdly disconnected. But that should be the whole game. The whole movie is disconnected references. Daffy is like Torser.

Notorious P.I.G.? What is happening? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't just say Notorious P.I.G. Oh, I can and I did. My point is that Daffy, who is so fucking funny in general, right? His whole game is being like flustered,

having this bravado, and immediately getting deflated. It makes sense to have him be like Jeff Van Gundy, right? It makes sense to have him be on the side of the court, like losing his fucking mind. If they had that in the movie, they decided not to include it right nothing and it's like at that point why are you putting daffy on the sidelines in a blazer i mean to what end the notorious pig okay i i imagine the reality is that someone thought that up and was proud of

that decision and that's why it's in the movie. But I would like to imagine that there was some early meeting where some Warner executive was like, you know what? I have a great idea. Notorious P.I.G. And they're like, yeah, we'll think about that. And then every time he checks in, he's like, how's Notorious P.I.G. coming along?

At a certain point, they're like, do we have to do it? And he's like, yeah, we have to do Notorious P.I.G. We gotta do it. They also might have plugged Hamilton into the algorithm, right? But it's such a different type of rap. I feel like it's more a reference to the era of, like, tough Looney Tunes t-shirts. And, of course, it's also, like, his stuttering style.

Like, you could sort of, they're like, it'll be like, he starts that way. And then it becomes beatboxing and whatever also like i i swear to god i have i i cannot name specifics here right now i must have seen at least eight cartoon shows over the last 25 years do notorious pig jokes like that is like such a fucking worn out joke where you have a cartoon pig who acts hip hop. Because B-I-G right, if you swap the one letter. Everyone's gotten there. Like it took no time to get there.

So that's what I'm asking. Is like someone just like, well we have to do Notorious B.I.G. Or is it just some, yeah, anyway. I mean it's just because some old fucking executive where it's like to him that's the most recent reference to a hip hop artist. I mean Scott Gairner of Podcast The Ride had the perfect tweet about this movie which was to be. That's the most recent reference to a hip-hop artist. I want it to be some 55-year-old guy. I mean, Scott

Gairner of Podcast The Ride had the perfect tweet about this movie, which was just, it's like an entire movie made up only of studio notes. Like, it doesn't even feel like there was an original script there they were noting. It's like, this is a blue-sky ideation session

of just studio execs throwing everything and then they just put it in an arbitrary order like this movie's sweaty because it was designed in a sauna amongst like executives you know what i mean yes it was it was born from sweat how weird was it that they're they're so kid gloves with lebron in the whole film and then like that moment where lebron just basically bullies anthony dav Davis for having a unibrow. I, I found that really the unibrow moment in this movie.

And it's, thank you for reminding me of that. Cause I forget. Cause it's so, cause there's that earlier line where he says like, what do they do? My boy AD. And it's like, okay,

good. You acknowledge that one of these players is your teammate. Right. Sure. And it's odd that he is now a bird. It's not, it's some weird digital distortion. Like they could have made it that algorithm sucked them in and transformed them into monsters. Well, cause the, but it's not, it's some weird digital distortion. Like they could have made it that algorithm sucked them in and

transform them into monsters. Well, cause he's connected with Anthony Davis. And he's connected him to the NBA. So he needs to at least acknowledge like, right. I am. I like take showers with this man.

Now he is a bird. Like what happened? But then, right. There's that thing where he's like, of course, yes. At that point,

they're mad at the goon squad. Cause they're, you know, the heat of competitive spirit and playing, what's the game called? Joe Ball? Dom Ball? Dom Jam or something.

I think it's called Dom Ball. So he insults his brow, but then he writes, it's like three lines. It's like the brow's over with. You better shave that thing off. And also it's so weird because this has been something that Anthony Davis has always been like, yeah, I get a lot of criticism for it, but like, it's me and I like it. I own it and it's part of me. To the point, I say to James, sorry, but I say to James, Anthony Davis is the only one of these players I have ever heard of, right? You know about the brow.

I know about him because of the eyebrow. And the only thing I know about this guy is he's got the prominent eyebrow and he's really proud of it and he doesn't touch it. Yeah. That's all I know. He got drafted. Everyone was like, he's going to need to get rid of that thing. All I know is he's owned the shit out of that unit. That's all I know.

And by the way, I mean, cynically, that moment does sort of like cut Anthony Davis down to size a little bit. On behalf of LeBron. And look, if this movie was coming out and the Lakers were in the finals, it'd be different. But after Davis shat the bed in the playoffs, got hurt, it's kind of like, ooh. But actually, it almost functions even better

after, I guess this was filmed before the pandemic, right? Yes, it was filmed in 2019. But it almost functions even better actually after they won the title where it's like LeBron being like, yeah, this is my Robin. You know what I mean? Right, he's a bird.

Anthony Davis is arguably better than LeBron, maybe better than LeBron, hard to say. Well, at the very least- But when Anthony Davis was number one on the Pelicans, they were a fairly hopeless team. At this point, he is at least more talented than LeBron, even if he doesn't have the sort of genius basketball IQ. And also just gravitas and sort of whatever that communal superpower that LeBron has.

He is 10 years younger than LeBron, so he just has that going for him. Right. I mean, so you got Dame Lillard. Because of Dame time, he controls time. Klay Thompson is wet fire because he's the splash. I know it could never happen. How the energy just got sucked out of the room the second you started explaining.

Like not you just, you got quiet, but the three of us just sort of closed our eyes and exhaled. I think Dame Lillard probably would have been pretty good as the lead of this film. Dame Lillard is, yeah, he's pretty charismatic. And he has that thing, too, of like, I don't give a shit. I don't care. Like, I haven't left Portland.

Kyrie's a better dramatic actor. Fucking Uncle Drew. Kyrie's not gonna... I don't know anything about what the fuck is going on with Kyrie. Uncle Drew's a great comparative. Because Uncle Drew is not a good movie. But it's enjoyable to watch but it's like enjoyable to

watch it's more enjoyable to watch than this it's a little you bring little rel in as fucking community support and go like you need someone who's actually funny and knows how to be in movies to fucking carry this thing and it has the same basic plot which is we got to get the band back together you know right to play a tougher mean group of anonymous superpower their superpower in that movie is they're not 80 their youth yes right right but it but it's very similar it's and it's it's i i forget how much money i guess like it did okay it did okay it did okay let's find out i think it didn't cost as much 30 or 40 domestic right it didn't do great but like it so it probably won't do as well as this movie but i would say on balance,

more success, more, more of an artistic success, even though it's also like based on a commercial and like, well, that's kind of cursed. This movie felt like a commercial to me. This movie feels like a commercial for HBO Max.

It feels a lot like a Superbowl ad. Yes. The kind of thing where it's like, it's two minutes at the Superbowl. Oh, LeBron and the Looney Tunes. It's like Space Jam 2. And then there's like some link you can click on and watch the 10-minute

version on the website. When they do the fucking like ET sequel commercial. It feels like that. And you even said, James, everything that's happened in this movie could have been accomplished in two minutes. Like Space Jam felt like a better exploration of what is between the lines of a Super Bowl ad

where this felt like a Super Bowl ad that was stretched out. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And the joke is, look, we wouldn't actually remake Space Jam, but we can do it in the name of AT&T.

Right. And LeBron can, like, film it for, you know, half a day. Right, and give it his all. LeBron doesn't have to do as much. Yeah. Because, like, it is, look, having him be such a joyless character in this movie, right?

Having him be such a stick in the mud, asking him to mostly be like some sort of emotional spine of this thing is putting shit on him that I don't think he's innately equipped to do. I think he's better at comedy and he probably needs directors and co-stars who are like giving him jump ball energy to work off of. He needs a lot more. Yes. Anyone needs more help in this movie.

Absolutely. Yes. Anyone needs more help in this movie. Absolutely. But also, it is thankless to, and I have to imagine, once again, that this is a scheduling production reality because he's an actively playing player, to then mostly put him in animation world where he's going to suffer even more as a voiceover artist. Like, he's going to be even more flat. He's pretty flat.

This is another wild thing, because I was like, who's this fucking B like, B-team they handed the animation over to? It is ostensibly the same people who did the first movie. As far as I could tell, Tony Trevone and Spike Brandt, who are, like, Warner Brothers company men...

It looks bad. The first movie looks good. I know, I know. Like, the first movie is high-quality fucking animation. I know, and it looks crappy. And not only that, it's, like, shaded. There's, like, good dimensionality. Yeah, yeah, it's got lighting.

When he's in the real world, when he's in their world, it's composited well. When they're in his world, it's compos shaded they're like good dimensionality when he's in the real world when he's in their world it's composited well when they're in his world it's composited well the CGI looming scenes obviously look fucking awful but even when they're just

straight in animation world I was like it looks like those clips that occasionally go viral of those like nightmare Tom and Jerry direct-to-video movies where they're like

it's Tom and Jerry and the chocolate factory and they have this weird style they're clearly animated and like flash they're like, it's Tom and Jerry and the chocolate factory. And they have this weird style. They're clearly animated and like flash. They're very kind of like static. It looks nothing like LeBron. Looks nothing like LeBron, but also LeBron avatar is a disaster.

It looks terrible. And the Looney Tunes look bad. Like they, they design wise look bad. They don't move properly. The timing is off, which is all of Looney Tunes is about timing. All the classic,

like fucking termite terrorist guys. It was all about the timing. All the classic like fucking Termite Terrace guys. It was all about the timing of the physicality and the energy and the gags. And this it's like everything is so sped up. You can't follow it. You can't track it. And those guys did the original Space Jam, did shit before that at Warner Brothers. And in the 25 years in between, mostly got relegated to direct to video Scooby Doo and Tom and Jerry movies. They did all those movies in between, and it's like

they have regressed in style, and they're now stuck doing, like, the shittier version of what they once did. But in this movie, Bugs Bunny dies. They kill him. LeBron realizes that the only way to win the game is to exploit his son's failings as a pro. It's true.

The way to win is to highlight his son's failure, right? The son says, but that crashed the game and caused that character to get deleted, which doesn't even

really make sense, but whatever, right? The threat is, then someone's gonna get deleted. Now, I said this already. I do not understand the stakes of what is in this for Algorithm.

I understand that he feels burned because they did not like his idea no they didn't like it and he wants lebron in the server verse so that he can put him in you know the fucking sisterhood the traveling pants is demi yes desperately pitched right but i don't understand what good it does for him that the looney tunes are deleted unless you have one line of dialogue where he says like they're the worst testing characters in our server we need to cut them right I don't understand what it does for him to suck a lot of civilians into the game to what end that does not improve your

program that does not improve your server it's also very confusing because it's already distracting every time they cut to any angle of the basketball game because your eyes are darting around trying to recognize characters there's too much visual information on screen all the background actors playing these ip surprises are doing way too much oh my god and doing it in like a weird early video game limited animation cycle where it's like they're doing the same cheer over and over again none of them are doing the same thing it doesn't feel like they're reacting to anything specific in the game. But also, you're looking at it, and you're like,

okay, that's definitely Mr. Freeze. This is a gangster, but I can't tell if he's supposed to be in The Sopranos, or he's just generic, off-the-rack gangster. There's some where you're like, okay, well, I know who that is.

And there's some where you're like, okay, is this just vaguely supposed to be? Right. It's an archetype. You want, like, a fucking Roman soldier or whatever. And then you look next to him, and like postman postman what's a big warner brothers postman movie and then you go oh that might just be a postman because for whatever reason algorithm has chosen the first

thousand people who look at their phone and sucked them in sure well one thing space jam one did really well too is tack back to the real life consequences of people both disappearing into a golf hole but also having their talent zapped so you have the nba collapsing it's like pandemic people and like and even and even for the comedy you know just bill murray talking you're just saying look larry like the game is changing like with these stars going out like right, anything's on the table. There's real-world consequences. And Sonequa Mark-Green gets sucked into this and is just like,

you better win this game. You should be asking eight million questions right now. This is the thing that's so annoying when LeBron says to his kid, hey, we need to figure this out because this is high stakes. And his kid doesn't get it. So then you're just like okay so there's no stakes right so let's exploit this glitch but if we exploit the glitch someone might get deleted it's a risk i'm willing to take what's the risk you're gonna die the looney tunes are gonna die your son all these people here who are like like what does it matter and then it's like they do do it, it works. It half works, but then fully works

because the son throws the thing. It's weird also that he has to win his son's love back by beating him at basketball. And that the son being a good player, he doesn't transform. He beats him in the son's way. So that's the sort of homage. I also think they should have been playing

against original characters that his son made. That would have worked. Well his son sort of nominally scanned those players right? I understand that. I understand that but it would have made more sense if it's like dad you're playing against my creation. You have to like reckon with my work right? In this

way where it's like this is this weird mangling of their technology of his technology. When he takes to the court and he's like super powered it's just like well he weird mangling of their technology of his technology um when he takes to the court and he's like super powered it's just like well he's a little kid and he's got these fucking like tron beams around his arm and he can jump really high and he can do fucking whatever like it just means nothing the game is rigged he throws this fucking jump point lebron wins the thing's over everyone's celebrating then like five minutes later Bugs is like

cough cough it's been nice I'm dying right oh no why does he need to die cut because Christ died for our sins

okay I don't know I have no idea when that was happening I was like ready to leave right go home to my child the movie ends three minutes later

I know and I'm just like LeBron walking him to E3 camp and then bugs strung up and being like yeah it literally ends on the taco tuesday line right yes that's a lot just in some ways fitting but so but like how did you get here i don't know with tunes it's like you're not gonna say like we fucking broke the server first and now we all exist in your world. Once again, in the original Space Jam, Michael Jordan has to reckon with the discovery. You're real.

All of you are real. Like, there's a reaction to that. You exist. In this, it's just like, oh, you found a way to come through the TV? Well, I don't know how many spare bedrooms we have. The answer is, you probably have a lot. You probably have a fair amount of spare bedrooms. Also, do toons sleep? Yeah. Do they?

No. What's the name of the big red guy again? Gossamer. I love Gossamer. He's cool. I like that Gossamer gets screen time. And the transformation. He does. I will say, yeah, let's play the box office game. I'm done talking about this movie. No, no, no. I'm sorry. We have at least

another hour. They get turned into, as you mentioned 3d yes which we knew because it was in the promotional material and it was like oh god yeah now the movie actually presents this is like a hellish abomination it's like yes algae rhythms final insult is to do this yeah so it's kind of funny that that's in there where they're like look we did it and they're also like but we we know it's bad like we know that's not cool i also just want so why'd you do it i know whatever i don't know i don't know why'd you do it well i also also wanted to mention i noticed i was in the crowd in the movie that you're in there i had no idea i don't even remember being they acquire blank check productions we're part of the server we're in hbo max yeah yeah uh

what happens to algae rhythm at the end of this film do we have any just leave right right and warner brothers just takes his next pitch right it's true there's not even a sequence of in like warner brothers being like all right shut that down why can't i get shoved in a cannon like michael jordan is like nerd lux why do you let him talk like this and they realize that they have an abusive boss and they fucking shove him in a cannon. Like, Michael Jordan is like, nerdlucks, why do you let him talk like this? And they realize that they have an abusive boss and they fucking shove him in a cannon.

And then the nerdlucks are just on the basketball court for two shots at the end of this movie. Oh, I'm seeing here that, right, I forgot,

remember, he posterizes Al G. Rhythm. Yes. Which was one of his, like, fatality. By the way, Ernie Johnson. Ernie Johnson,

who does the, you know does the commentary, of course. Who is a great man. Television personality guy, but just really, it's a tough. I just think that's not, like, when. Algebra is deleted in that moment. I forgot about that. But remember, he goes like, this isn't how I want to go out. Why?

Because is that part of the game? I think, yes. If it's your poster. If his rules apply to himself, I guess. It just fucking means nothing. Like the loser is deleted. It means nothing. And when, what's his name, Chris Davis, who plays Malik, came on screen, I was just like,

why didn't they hire Lil Rel to do this? You see, right. Yeah, it's a fair question. And then bringing Lil Rel and what's his name, the other commentator in, it's just like, well, that's not putting him in a Bill Murray position. He has nothing to play off of. Yes. You're just putting him

with a guy who's not a comedian on a green screen reacting to nothing, pre-written jokes, whereas like Bill Murray, Wayne Knight, the whole point is like, give the basketball player

someone to play off of who is funny as opposed to an okay child actor and a dramatic actor who is trying to cut loose. And by the way, if The Sun had just designed sort of the new NBA jam, right?

That would have changed the whole... That's all it needs to be. It doesn't need this extra layer of ridiculousness. You could have a four-point play, but just the whole idea of random... You didn't like the power-ups? I wish I could remember any of their names. Any of the trick plays

that they do. Of course, there's the Notorious B.I.D. I mean, that gets them like five points. Taz flips the court with the spinning. He does do that. That's cool. I'm trying to remember. What are other things that happen? They move the hoop, right? Algyrhythm moves the hoop, but he only does that one time. He should have done that more often if he wanted to win

in my opinion. Granny does something. Granny probably does. She does the fucking matrix move with she does the like yeah yeah she does like slow motion on right uh chronos and then you know the only one i kind of like because it felt a little more like actual looney tunes i think the only looney tunes they get right in this movie are wiley coyote and roadrunner and it helps that they're silent they can't have them say dumb shit yes but that that bit is almost a decent this is how a looney tune would play basketball thing where he has the crazy acme contraption and he puts the bird seed on it and he knows that roadrunner will hit it really fast and make a bunch of balls yeah that works for me right that was yeah i give that a five yeah i forgot about that that too. The many Wileys also go into the hoop.

The clones. Right. And so that, I mean, gets them a lot of points. So you need to acknowledge the skill of that. Like I under... It's just good play is what I'm saying. It's just... Yeah, it's fundamental.

I just want to say, we talked about the aborted Space Jam sequels they didn't make, right? Looney Tunes Back in Action was supposed to just be a pin of like it's been six years we need to get something back out there and then we're gonna make skate jam their plan was to make skate jam right after back in action back in action which is you know who's charismatic is tony hawk such a good actor fucking sizzling such a good actor i really enjoyed tony haw, but there's a reason he doesn't speak in his own video. Correct.

He's sizzled. Back in Action is a huge fucking flop. It's a huge flop, even though it's a very artistically successful movie. Yes, and it has been a joy for me because I've defended that movie for 18 years now. The last month of pre-Space Jam articles as people being like this is the one we should respect not space jam yeah um and that movie look is giordante trying to deal with a lot of stupid studio notes and there's weird shit in that movie but it it has a pure heart right and there's really excellent shit in it and it gets the looney tunes um but since then like every three years warner brothers tries to do something with the Looney Tunes.

There was famously this thing, Lunatics Unleashed, which was their post-back in action thing where they were like, okay, we failed. The Looney Tunes are no longer funny. They're badass. They become superheroes, right? They did this, like, dark, gritty. They all have, like, Neon Tron colors and, like, gritted teeth. And they're, like, a space force that's fights people. Yeah.

And that lasted for two seasons and was like despise. They did a show called the Looney Tunes show. That was all the characters, but in like a sitcom sort of setting, bugs and Daffy were neighbor, were roommates trying to fucking reinvent the wheel. That was just like bugs. There was another one that was on recently.

I will say this. LeBron, this movie is rumored as early as 2013. People make the joke as soon as LeBron hits the court. You're right. But 2013, it's rumored. I remember because I was on the set of Draft Day, and it's Reitman

and Joe Magic, the producers who produced that fucking movie. And I was like, what's the deal with this? And Joe Magic was like, no one told us. Like, good luck. Godspeed. That was a fucking nightmare to make that movie. Have fun trying.

Right? And then a year later, I believe Trainwreck comes out, is a big hit. And then LeBron signs his overall deal with Warner Brothers. And people are like,

there we go. Finally, it's happening. It takes five years to get to filming after that point. Justin Lin's attached at one point. It goes nowhere. Dick Ebersole's sons were writing it at one point.

They fall off. Then when Coogler and Nance comes on is when it finally fucking gains traction. And then Nance. It's also when LeBron moves to LA. Which, by the way, everyone says, oh, he's doing it because he wants to be fucking doing this entertainment stuff yeah i don't know if you guys saw this but a month ago he announced that he's moving his production deal to universal interesting for like four years he's got a four-year overall deal the warner brothers deal is done sure right i guess that the the what was the cut was the cut on hbo or what was that show called the barbershop yeah it's on the shop

right the shop so like he did that and he did this and now they're saying they're going to do things for fucking Universal. He produced a few other things. He did that show Survivor's Remorse which was on Starz. Yes.

I'm sorry. I forgot about that. He's done some things. Survivor's Remorse was really good. He's done some things. It was sort of hurt by being on Starz.

Um. And. No. John David Washington was on Ballers. Jesse T. Usher was on Survivor's Remorse. Okay. What were you saying James? Has he produced other movies David? I don on Ballers. Jesse T. Usher was on Survivors. What were you saying, James? Has he produced other movies, David?

I don't think so. He's done documentary shit. That's the thing. He's done stuff more in the sort of sports movie world here. I'm going to look it up, though. Let's see. The Universal Deal announcement I saw made it sound like they're going to try to shepherd more stuff. Not LeBron vehicles.

Doesn't he own some chunk of Friday the 13th? He's involved with a Friday the 13th remake, which I think might be a universal. Let's see. He produced that Netflix Naomi Osaka thing that Garrett Bradley made. He produced a documentary for HBO about like college athletes, amateur athletes, right?

Yes, top class. He did that game show, The Wall, right? Which everyone has a game amateur athletes, right? Yes, yes, yes. Top class. He did that game show, The Wall, right? Oh, Jesus, right. Which everyone has a game show now, right? He did something called Becoming. He's producing a lot of shit. Which is another sort of athlete Disney+. He did I Promise, which was about his school.

Right. Yeah, he has done a fair amount of things. Mostly like not, seemingly like mostly neither successful nor sort of notably unsuccessful. And he's also sort of doing like a low level Oprah thing where it's like, here are my causes, here are people I want to shine a light on kind of shit.

I don't think he necessarily has like good commercial instincts. It does not seem like he does. It doesn't, he doesn't. I mean, obviously like he's worked the Nike deal. He's a good businessman. I'm saying good commercial instincts. It does not seem like he does. I mean, obviously, he's worked the Nike deal well. He's a good businessman. I'm saying good commercial instincts. Sneakers stink.

Compared to fucking Jordan's? Well, that's it. Come on. Do you think he's a better player than Jordan? Do you think he's the guy? I know it's the most hackneyed discussion in basketball. No, I just think you can make the argument he's had a better career, do you think he's the guy? I know it's the most hackneyed discussion in basketball. No, I just think you can make the argument he's had a better career,

and I think those arguments are very difficult to separate. The crucial argument to me is that, and this is, and people have said, I do think Jordan was playing against worse competition, right? Like, the NBA was at its most diluted in his prime, and is at its strongest in LeBron's. Like, that's LeBron's biggest argument. But I'll say this,

like, even removing other players from the equation, as someone who doesn't watch basketball games, but would occasionally be compelled to watch, like, Michael Jordan YouTube videos. Jordan is a more visually compelling player. I just look at him and I'm like, this is insane what this person is doing on a physical level. Whereas LeBron, I understand it's like,

he's a very, you know, obviously he's a physically gifted person. But from what I gather, his power comes more from like his strategic basketball. He's a cannier player. Jordan was a much more, to get specific, was a much more flexible athlete as well, which is a big difference in like the visual component.

But I would also say on the other direction, and not just the rules, not just the proliferation, three-point shooting and the hand check, but also just the extent to which NBA basketball now runs so much through whoever your team's best player is, which is also a big component of the player empowerment and switching teams because you get... The team is the player a lot more.

That was not true to the same extent. Michael Jordan could have averaged 10 assists a game, 12 rebounds a game, if the team had literally just run jordan could have averaged 10 assists a game 12 rebounds game if the team had literally just run everything through him the way they do their star players now so i think they're but that was it's a tough comparison that way but what i fucking love about the last dance where it's like about the bulls like it wasn't about the jordan show part of that that fucking legacy was like look at what he got out of these other players look at how he went right yeah absolutely you're talking to the other players what i think jordan actually was in the

team realm doing a lot to subvert the image of the jordan show by being like i'll still like punch steve kerr in the fucking face you know what i mean which is not a star thing to do you know that's like with like giving kerr the fucking is that's what right that that section about when he took the amazing shot and no one expected it. Yeah. And then he goes and gives that speech

and he's like making the jokes about like Jordan eating his dirt and shit like that. Yeah. And he's like, fuck you. But there's a certain generosity to that,

right? Well, am I wrong? The whole thing with Jordan is no one knew he was an asshole until later. I understand he's an asshole. And then they realize

he's a huge asshole. To be fair, with Jordan, this is a separate- And with LeBron, people call him an asshole when he's really obviously. And then they realize he's a huge asshole with Jordan. And when people call him an asshole, when he's really obviously not a separate conversation, I feel like though there is something Jordan is an asshole. I think it's a little complicated because if you watch the last dance, one,

one really interesting thing about Jordan is the extent to which like, uh, the reaction to Jordan from his teammates is so much different than like his driver or like his mate. Like Jordan seemed to be very kind and often friends with people who like, for instance, if you did a Karl Malone documentary, John Stockton would probably say,

playing with Karl was amazing, but we don't know what like Karl's like driver thinks of him. He might be a total dickhead. You know what I mean? Jordan seemed to be like a very nice guy to a lot of the people in his life, but particularly prickly and unnice to his teammates and his coaches and so yeah right right yeah right he's just ruthless i think lebron is nice there's not like he's fine he seems like a good guy i would much rather like fucking have a beer

with lebron than michael jordan but that's part of it works against which guy I'd rather watch in a movie LeBron is very nice but LeBron also does feel like a lot a lot of a lot of LeBron's kindness has a lot to do with the way LeBron sees himself and sees himself in relation to like the narrative of his

career and his life and all that stuff and it's like there's you know LeBron has been criticized in the past for not feeling like the most genuine, but that's the whole thing, right? LeBron has to live in public because everything's in public now and it's social media, right?

Jordan to have that burden, like this with all his fame, he still got to live in private, go gamble. And he was like the most public in a way that any athlete had been up until that point. And still it was, but he was like putting himself out there more than anyone else the last thing I want to say about the Looney Tunes just to

close this loop on this thing I was setting up before we go to the box office game is like seven or eight years ago I had like a fucking phone call with a guy at Warner Brothers when I think they maybe hadn't announced Space Jam yet but it was heavily rumored was going to happen. And he

was like, I'm tasked with figuring out how to revive the Looney Tunes. I don't really know what they are. He was just like, I don't know. Your agent said that you're a dork who likes cartoons. And the pitch at the time was we want to do five to ten theatrically

released short films with the Looney Tunes. Logical. And LeBron. They were like, we want to start testing them out in the way that Jordan had the ads. And my whole thing to them, which look, I didn't work on these.

I didn't do anything right. But my whole pitch to them was like, you shouldn't think about the combination of LeBron and Bugs Bunny together as like what their personalities are. You should write Looney Tunes and place LeBron in them. Like what you want to do is that kids have no perspective. You want to remind them what these characters are innately funny at doing and just come up with comedic circumstances.

And rather than being Bugs and Daffy, have it be Bugs and LeBron for this one or have it be LeBron is filling the granny role in a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon or whatever. Just like get LeBron comfortable in front of camera and put them in comedic circumstances. This does not happen. What happens is... They should have done that. They should have done that. What happens is, like, a year ago,

when HBO Max launched, they just put up 60 Looney Tunes. They had been quietly working on 60 Looney Tunes. They put none of them in theaters. They just kind of got dumped when HBO Max went up there. Guess what? They'reunes. They put none of them in theaters. They just kind of got dumped on HBO Max. Guess what? They're good.

They're all fucking good. It's the best shit they've done with the Looney Tunes in 20 years. I was talking to Matt Singer about it, and I haven't watched them, but he was like, not only are they better than the movie, they look better. They look better, but they also have their own style.

They're not just pastiche. They have a comedic perspective. They got good people involved. They did 60 of them it's bizarre how disconnected that is from all the looney tunes stuff in this movie that's all i'm gonna say and that you look if you watch the movie and it fucking bummed you out as much as it did us then maybe go watch those shorts instead and that's gonna get your fix and if you're listening to this episode you didn't watch the movie and you're wondering whether it's worth hate watching

it's not because the cardinal sin of this movie is it's fucking boring. It's fucking boring. Too long. When you when you said David clips you saw that are cursed. Watch those. So laugh at it or whatever. There's not this perverse like I can't fucking believe this. When you say it's less terrible than you thought it would be.

It's because to a certain degree you expect you're going to watch this book of Henryry style and go oh my fucking god right and it's less of an abomination and more of just like there's nothing to this movie it's joyless it's cynical i sat there stone-faced i certain points i just took stock of the fact of there is no muscle in my face currently working right there are jokes happening on screen i'm not wincing i'm not smiling i'm not looking more intently i'm just blank i'm fucking blank i'm like what the fuck is happening and why is any of this happening i saw it with the crowd did you watch it at home i assume yeah so with the crowd silent silent we saw with the crowd that was i would say largely children like it was a lot of parents 50 50 and then people our age silent like maybe two things got any sort of response. Might be laughs.

And why is the computer black? There's the only two laughs I remember. But it just felt like very quiet. Ben, we have to ask because your girlfriend outed you right before we started recording. You were saying how awful. No, you had girlfriend outed you right before we started recording and did reveal that you cried three times while watching the movie I did three times

and I don't alright I cry really easily at movies me too I'm an emotional guy and we love it about you but I mean I cry easily but I can't even

I can't I was mad I was mad and she noticed and I was like fighting it back she's like why are you crying I'm like

I don't really know why imagine if Ben were like I never cry during films this was the why this is the one that broke are you crying? I'm like, I don't really know why. Imagine if Ben were like, I never cry during films. This was the one that broke me. You have to understand, James, we did an episode on Kiki's Delivery Service, the Miyazaki movie, and we came into the studio. It was on a weekend, and Ben was sitting on the couch

of the office. No one else was there. He was watching this movie and sobbing. It was great. So we know that there's a history of Ben getting very emotionally affected. That's a masterpiece. Ben was kidnapped by an algorithm when he was 10 years old. Maybe that was unlocking it a little bit. His dad really wanted him to be a scientist. He didn't want him to produce podcasts.

Ben does know wet fire. His father, Larry Bird. Yeah, exactly. I love Looney Toons. I love the characters. You're a bit of a Looney Tune yourself. I am kind of a Looney Tune. Taz was the stuffed animal that I slept with as a child. I mean, yes, obviously makes sense.

Bugs Bunny, I would argue there is a case to be made that he is the funniest person to ever be in movies if you consider the fact that he's not a person and you allow it. When did you cry? I got emotional when they were all together. Sure, sure. When they were all back together.

I don't know. It's just seeing them unlock something in my head and doing bits watch these shorts watch these shorts i will what else what else yeah but that one makes a little a little sense yeah it was that and then it was just kind of like i don't know the father son stuff and like granny notorious B.I.G. Seeing such a tasteful tribute to notorious B.I.G. Right, baby. I'm sure he's looking down

in heaven. No, I don't know. It was just seeing them together and then there was some point in the movie where then when they were like down but then they were up again. I don't remember. Do you remember? Your girlfriend is currently standing

in the door frame shaking her head. Come on Nellie. Nellie get on microphone. You definitely cried when Don Cheadle was being mean to the son. When he turns on him. I don't like that.

I don't like when algorithms are mean. You didn't like the bullying. No. The big father-son embrace. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of nice. It's kind of nice. It's kind of nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. I was like yeah you're sort of talking around i don't know some of this and nelly's just standing with her arms crossed shaking her head going like are you gonna say it or not let's play the box office game griffin this film opened

number one at the box office million dollars did better. Did better than I thought it would. It did too. I mean, my question to you was like, is anyone going to go see this? Huge hit or massive flop. Right. And there was a point where I was like, there's a depressing dystopian outcome where I see this movie opening to 50 just because the nostalgia is so high.

I also could see it opening to like 10 and shitting the bed in the Heights style. I think a 32 million opening in a normal world with no HBO Max probably does mean kind of like a 50 million opening, doesn't it? I think so. In a total no COVID world, yeah. I think that's a 50

million dollar opening. That having been said, second weekend drops have been horrible for everything in this era. Not for everything. Almost everything. No, like Quiet Place has held very well. There are some that have done better. Usually movies that are not available on other services. Yeah, F9's

held pretty well. F9 had a bad drop on July 4th weekend, but as every box office person will tell you, that's actually normal. All the HBO Max movies have had the worst drops. And now Black Widow had a bad drop. Yes. Which is number two. Right. And even the

small drops, it still is. Things are not multiplying as much as they used to. I'm just saying, the multiplier on Quiet Place and F9 when compared to earlier films in those franchises is lower. It does feel like everything shifted a little more front loaded. The streaming stuff

day and date has gone even more in that direction. I think this is going to fucking multiply horribly. It feels like the buzz could not be more toxic. Is there any chance we see another Space Jam? What would they do? I think there's certainly a chance, right?

I don't even want to consider that reality. There's definitely a chance. I mean, there's always a chance. What is it? LeBron is a more media-minded person than mj in that way so he might want to do it deal the universal true so maybe not if i were him my takeaway from this would be i should do a fucking another comedy i believe that is what his takeaway will be he's been tweeting in this kind of way of like see it did well and it's sort of like you know what he's probably like i'm mostly unscathed by this train wreck movie that I had to fire

the director. You know, like, you know. But like Reitman saw, he should have done everything he could to get Apatow or anyone Apatow adjacent to be the comedy whisperer on this movie. He probably should have. I don't know. I mean, he got Coogler. Coogler is clearly the Reitman type.

And Coogler's like, here's... I love Cooglerler but like it's fucking hilarious you ever seen that no you know i mean fair but like right kugler is the honcho he's bringing in kugler's like great terence nance this guy has this sensibility that's gonna make sense we're gonna clearly sells him on him right and then obviously something it is pretty crazy by the way that we're talking about like lebron james going into like what his 17th or 18th season in the NBA whatever it is is also like maybe plotting his next apatowian comedy like yeah it's not really that's why he might be the best but but like uh we we said afterwards like James and I were talking

and we were like I I have to imagine that from the moment Terrence Nance gets fired, Hooler just kind of goes like, okay. Because I just kind of can't believe him watching this footage once Malcolm Deidle comes on and going like, good. Or having any notes that are listened to.

The defense they will trot out is the defense you always trot out for a movie like this, which is like, what? Kids liked it. It did fine. Kids liked it,

it made money shut up. Get off my back. Right. And I think, maybe kids do like it. Yeah, that guy's just got so much fucking integrity and has made like

two of the most personal fucking major studio movies of the last 10 years. It is hard to believe and I read interviews with him back in the day when he was talking about like we're really trying

to make a movie about like black men as fathers and what this means in a current landscape. I understand how with an avant-garde director who's maybe coming at it from a

fucking Lord and Miller angle and the movie's more self-aware and this and that and he's trying to put in emotional background. That makes sense. But I think from a business calculation, it was a bad idea not to get a comedy person involved because they forgot that the number one thing that this premise should be is funny. There should be jokes in it. There are jokes in it.

Successful jokes. Granny Notorious P. it. There are jokes in it. Successful jokes. Granny Notorious P.I.G. makes an appearance. Number two at the box office is Black Widow and the Colossal Drop. A movie that you are not a fan of? I think it sucks. You think it's like bottom of the barrel Marvel? I don't think it's very good.

My question is, is it the worst one or is it like the third worst one? I don't think it's the worst one. I found it so unpleasant. I saw it in 4DX and I almost fell asleep. And that's like difficult. That is difficult to fall asleep when a chair is punching you. But it happened a number of times. I saw it with JD.

He felt the same way. I think that movie sucks. I don't think it's very good at all. James, you don't really care about Marvel movies. No. You've seen three of them? Two or three. You saw Guardians and Black Panther.

You saw ones that broke through. Well, I saw the first Iron Man. I think those are the only three you've seen, though, right? The first Iron Man, the first Guardians, and Black Panther. Am I wrong? No, I saw the first Captain America. Okay.

That might be it. Yeah, I mean, the biggest problem with Black Widow to me Is and it's been remarked on It's just It seems like they're like look alright fine We'll do a Black Widow movie And Scarlett Johansson has the energy of like Yeah okay

I'll do a Black Widow movie She's got Michael Jordan energy She seems bored She seems really bored It's very bizarre I don't know if she's bored or if she's just playing this sort of removed character but she just seems pretty bored and florence pew is there and florence pew is just such a she can't help but blow her off the screen

she's not even trying florence pew is is pretty impressive in that movie considering what she's given to work with the harbour and white's characters make no sense and those performers i like a lot in those roles and they don't make any sense. The plot doesn't make it, but whatever. Pew punches through. The entire movie feels like the How Did Jack Catch His Tattoos episode of Lost.

And here's my big takeaway then we can stop talking about this movie. I think it would be difficult even if you were directly challenged to do it, to make a film that is more glib and flippant about a global trafficking ring. It is... Well, they're assassins, okay?

So they're assassins. I'm just saying, Marvel movies often do this thing where they take kind of extreme subjects and candy coat them and don't really deal with the darkness of it. But this movie, it is so overt. They're not dancing around what it's about and also they don't really give a shit about it at all

other than as a vehicle for female empowerment to have them at the end go like yes thank you they say yes thank you those are only words yeah they are very diverse though all of the widows there's black black widows and hispanic one it was just that look i joked about this it's that kevin foggy thing where he's like look look look and look they don't say they're nothing they're fucking brainwashed slaves like like the take it taken to like actually is more invested in its victims than this movie is number three at the box office the other new movie this week a movie i'm very excited to see. Oh.

The new wide release movie. Yeah, why am I not thinking about the... Oh, oh, oh. Which I'm also very excited to see. I almost saw the other night. I'm going to go see this week. Escape Room Tournament of Champions. A sequel to a masterpiece. Great movie.

Have you seen Escape Room, Ben? I have not. You would dig it. You'd love it. It fucking rules. Yeah. It rules. It's a cool kid film.

I'm not going to tell you anything else. Yeah, everything about it is good. It's a fun, silly horror movie, horror thriller. Exciting to see the sequel. Puzzles. Taylor Russell's a cool kid film. Cool movie for cool kids. Everything about it is good. Silly horror movie, horror thriller. Exciting sequel. Taylor Russell's a fucking star. I'm all in. Sony has had this very bizarre strategy where they held on to all of their movies,

didn't sell them to streaming when everyone else was doing their fire sale, then sold a couple things to Netflix right as the pandemic was winding down. And then a bunch of these movies they just announced like, actually it's coming out in three weeks. Like Peter Rabbit was supposed to come out later. This was supposed to come out later.

They moved them up with no marketing and they have underperformed. And it's a bummer to me because this was like pushed back to January of next year, which is when the first movie came out in January, overperformed. And then they went like, never mind, this is coming out in 20 days and no one knows it's out and it's doing poorly and i'm worried they won't make a third one uh i think it's gonna be okay i think they're happy with it apparently but we'll see who knows the industry makes no fucking sense anymore it's all run by algorithm yeah algorithm yes number four griffin it's a film we saw in theaters together uh the movie we saw in theaters together is f9, my second favorite movie of 2021.

Good movie. I was saying this to you. I've gone to the theaters now like 20 times, I think, since vaccination. Sure. Step up your fucking game, Lights, Camera, Jackson, who was bragging about five. I've gone at least 20 times. The only two movies I fully love are F9 and undine um those are the only two you've loved so far well you were pretty hyped up about those who wish me dead though that's my

third you were kind of swagging out about i would oh no i agree but like that for me is like that movie is like the fucking best gentleman six i've ever seen pig yet i'm seeing pig tomorrow i expect i will love that yeah i gotta see it. In the Heights didn't quite. I'm trying to think of it. I like it. You see Zola. Zola I'm seeing. I am so fucking hyped for it. That's my shit, man. And I will say, I'll say, I like

Luke a lot. Luke is probably number three of those who wish me dead's number four. I've been so bullish about going back to the theaters that a lot of the things that have gone straight to streaming, I haven't watched. So I haven't seen No Good Deed yet. I haven't seen Mitchells vs. Machines. A couple of the other streaming things that people like.

No Sudden Move is what you're talking about. Not No Good Deed. No Good Deed is, um, what's it called? Idris Elba and Taraji P. Right. All right. Number five, of course, is the film starring my daughter. The Boss Baby Family Business.

This is the first time I think we're saying this on Mike. I have now established, I found a new bruise to poke on David, which is that his daughter looks exactly like the Boss Baby. He agrees. I swear I'm not doing this just to piss him off. I think she looks like the Boss Baby. I am now willing to reveal on Mike that,

unrelated and not knowing this, Joey sent a family, a poster of boss baby to the family text thread. David, she looks like, you know what? She looks like a baby. Your daughter,

your daughter has blue eyes and very fair hair. Her pattern is very similar to the little blonde girl that the boss baby has. The widow's peak. She has a similar shaped skull. I understand you should take as a compliment. Boss baby is a baby that was designed to be adorable. You have a very cute daughter, but your daughter looks like

the fucking Boss Baby and you should own it. You should dress her up in a little suit. I'm not going to do that. I put the, you know, you can buy jeans for the baby. Like we have,

someone gave us a pair of jeans and I put them on. And it's so cute, but she was just like, what is this? I'm like, why are you doing this to me? Even though they're like

little stretchy baby jeans. David, get ready for fucking Hanukkah where I buy her eight suits. Forever Purge. Going down in this. Good movie. I like it. That's firmly in my top ten. Really like it.

Upper end of the franchise. Quiet Place 2. I do solid liked it. The Roadrunner. The Anthony Bourdain movie. A movie that was seemingly produced

by Algy Rhythm and has similarly dark, bleak thoughts about human beings. Cruella, hanging out in the top 10. Cruella's might,

I mean, it's in the 80s right now. I did not like Cruella. Yes, 83. Cruella, I will say, falls into the categories of

movies I'd probably give an extra star because I saw it in theaters and I didn't get to go to theaters. Isn't it also two and a half hours long? It's very long. Very long. But like Cruella and Kong vs. Godzilla and whatever, I just sat there and I went like, I'm happy to be seeing a movie again.

None of this upsets me. I don't care anymore. I'm just happy to be watching something. Didn't like Cruella. What's Ben doing? Ben is showing us merchandise spotlight. You should do merch spotlight really quick because this is a fucking merch goddamn fucking, you know, You can buy the Toon Squad uniform.

I think that's pretty cool. Warner Brothers had a press release. I think the uniform's good. Bragging about the fact that this is like the most licensed partners that any movie has had like ever Or at least in a very long time What about that moment where LeBron falls And he makes a Nike swoosh as the hole

Instead of like a regular hole That was grim I almost Got they're like little toys Where it's the basketball and you open it up and you get a character inside And I was gonna do that like it was a reprise of our Holtz Transylvania episode and I get a character inside. And I was going to do that. Like it was a reprise of our whole Transylvania episode. And I couldn't give enough of a shit to go to Five Below and purchase them.

He has Roadrunner sneakers out by Nike, LeBron by Looney Tunes. Those are kind of cool. I don't love these. And I'm the target audience for Looney Tunes sneakers. You are. I had Looney Tunes Keds as a kid. And then they have a Goon Squad pair of sneakers as well. In case you want it to be wet fire.

Right. Well, I mean, in case. These suck. I think they're bad. Okay, this is Sylvester and Tweety sneakers. They look kind of like Sylvester, and then they got a Tweety stripe on them. These are just lame.

That's a Lola Bunny one, maybe? Yas Queen, Empowered. I hated that fucking wonder woman scene it's so bad joke and it's rosario dawson playing her because rosario dawson plays her and all the like dc animated movies i would assume but then then adopt the style of those movies rather than this generic this is a comic book no or make it look like a real fucking like no wet fire i don't know oh jesus this is the best merch that we have to buy for our group. It's Pat.

No, Pete. Pete, David! It's a referee pocket t-shirt from Space. Is he supposed to be a whistle? I don't know. Is that what it is? His hands are USB ports. He's got USB ports on his finger. Jesus, this is the back of the

shirt? No, that's another version of the you know what it sort of looks like is what like if you like combine like composite or it feels like if you can combine composite sketches yeah and then just becomes this like whole like indescript nondescript like face it looks like you know what i mean five characters that have sold a lot of right it's like if you pour all the colors in, it's like brown. He doesn't really. He has no personality. He has no game. And he is physically indistinct. I don't know. I feel like he had

electrifying chemistry with Al. None of us know what he is. I don't know. He's a thing. I couldn't find it on the internet either. There's no information. It feels like one of those things where they're like, should we say what he is? And it's like, what if we just don't? I did assume he was from some other shit movie I hadn't seen. No, he's from nothing.

This is their one original character and he can suck my butt. I hope he dies. So we're going to get Griffin one of the peach shirts. And then we're going to get Granny and Speedy in the Matrix. You've got to get a Matrix TV with Granny and Speedy. Shouldn't Granny be in like Driving Miss Daisy or something? Is that a Warner Brothers property? Is it?

See, I put five times more thought into this than they did. I don't know if Warner Brothers wanted to revisit Driving Miss Daisy with LeBron. Is he going to be driving Granny? Like, I don't know. Quickly, we're getting in trouble here. Maybe Bugs is driving Granny. I don't know. LeBron's Dan Aykroy. Maybe Bugs is driving Granny. I don't know. LeBron's Dan Aykroyd.

Yeah, LeBron's Dan Aykroyd. This is another Matrix show. Or we could get you this one. Going old school. But, like, Ben, look at... Is this on the Nike site? No, this is on the Looney Tunes site. Jeez.

LooneyTunes.com? I should spend more time on that site. But, like, 8,000 different T-shirt designs. They just made so much fucking merch for this movie what else are they supposed to do i know yeah well and they also they're like the first movie made a billion dollars in merch i guess people want to buy this as much but i also feel like we're in a different climate i don't know i wonder if any of this shit will sell it won't there's no monoculture anymore it won't but it'll do okay enough the sneakers will sell

because sneakerhead culture is so extreme it's just an escape buy and the whole thing is like I don't know if kids are fucking buying the toys is LeBron gonna win another ring James I just like to occasionally throw a basketball question to James we're done we should I think I think he will

because I think that LeBron I mean look it's very hard to say how long someone's career is really going to last because a lot of times when it's easy to project and be like, yeah, like he can be like a, he could turn into like a power forward and be like a supporting player for four years. But luckily when it stops, it stops quickly.

But I do see LeBron at some point possibly leaving the Lakers again. And at that point, I think we can all assume that wherever he goes, he's going to pick, we know now he's going to pick the best team, right? The best team he can find.

He'll just be, right. And also, you know, maybe LeBron will go play for like a million bucks somewhere and try to win a ring when he's like... It would be fun if he like went to Charlotte and did that,

played for MJ. Well, and if maybe if Charlotte has like at that point, LaMelo Ball and three other really good players, he would go there. But I think LeBron.

That's the ego thing where it's like he might actually be able to sacrifice his ego to do it. Whereas MJ could obviously. I would like to ask Even on the Wizards. Right.

We're still like, we're on the star here. Do you think Bugs Bunny will ever win another Oscar? Like obviously the prerequisite for this is that they would have to start putting the shorts back

into theaters theatrically. But if anything, that's the thing I would like to see Warner Brothers be emboldened to do off of this success of Space Jam and New Legacy. I doubt they will because producing more shorts is just more content for HBO Max, which is the beast that they want to feed.

It would be nice if they started putting these characters before films. But also, I feel like the shorts that win now are so often, it's like, oh, it's about the guy's dad was in the Holocaust. They're very moody. That's why I'm saying, and if it's about the guy's dad was in the Holocaust. That's why I'm saying it. If it's not a short like that, and I'm very impressed with the fact that I've successfully hijacked this conversation, if it's not a short like that,

it's a Disney or Pixar short that played before a film in theaters got a wide release and so everyone saw it. It's like Paper Man or some shit. So I feel like they could put these things in film festivals to qualify them for an Oscar and they're good shorts and they'd be competitive but

I don't think they'll beat the moody personal piece unless they put it in front of a Warner Brothers movie and it actually plays well with the crowd. That's what I want to say. It'd be nice to see Bugs win another Oscar maybe even just a honorary. It'd just be cool if someone else

other than Pixar put a short in front of the feature. Yeah. And Pixar's no longer putting shorts in front of features. Now they're just saving them for fucking Disney. I think the Bucks are going to win.

Do you think so? I do. I just think that I don't think I think without Chris Paul seems Disney is still putting shorts in front of features.

They put one before Raya and the Last Dragon and I think also like I mean the fun thing about the Suns having home court advantage is basically I know the Bucks seem like they're in great position, but they have to win games.

And you have to win games. So this is a do or die game. I like the Africa team more than the movie. And I'm not crazy about it. At home, I think I have to take the Bucs. Did you hear that stat? 10 and 1. But I'd like more shorts in general.

It'd be nice if, like, I don't know, especially as you're trying to convince people to go back to the theaters it's like let's make the home team is 10 and one team is 10 you know because you have every studio should have their like fucking short film factory right everyone has characters at this point in detroit that they could put back in the circulation you know put it away or new characters right and the sp there was another and there are another yeah i just don't put a short of like it's so important when they have to win like they'd be like oh this nickelodeon movie is gonna have a cat dog yeah but it wouldn't just be an episode would be something very happy with like yeah you could do shit like that again going into even if it's only in front of totally and i think also i think there's something very positive about Giannis winning a ring a year after choosing to stay in a very small market. Now animated movies are two hours.

He's the only one who did it. Which you have to think about, Cars was the first animated movie to be over two hours, I think. You know, the Nets and Clippers. In an American studio system, at least. You know, these guys who don't play together, they get hurt. Incredibles was the longest animated film. And by the way, at the time when it came out, I good that's your witness and by the way i don't think that's the time when it came out i think that's it's like no you didn't do that right you know first of all run times have got absolutely for the net

where luca is like when people are off the net they played together what 10 games all year it's like three of them something like that you know kawaii is showing up for like half of the practices these are permanent features of these teams that are now being superseded by a player like a team doing things in a more traditional way which is a big part of their success right franchises i'm sorry ben that this is going to be like more of an editing hassle for you but i do think people will like it we are done and you all have to now leave my home. Okay. And as always, Pete can fucking die. Pete?

Well, I mean, he could at least be defined. And then die? Okay. If we're going out, we're going out loony. I'm on the quotes page. It's so bad.