The Flop House - Ep. #349 - Space Jam: A New Legacy

Episode Date: August 14, 2021

Look, you didn't think we were gonna let this one go by, did you? Does Space Jam: A New Legacy live down to the legacy of the original Space Jam, a film inexplicably loved by millennials everywhere? Or does it (gasp) manage to go even lower?ALSO: LIVE SHOW ALERT! -- We'll be doing another streaming live show, delivered directly to your computers or whatever you use for these things! Tune in on to watch us discuss the "classic" 1993 flop Super Mario Bros., do a few presentations, take a few questions via Twitter, and other assorted nonsense! Tickets are a mere $10! Hooray!ALSO ALSO: Today is the Flop House's birthday! We don't mention it on the show, but the day this is released is FOURTEEN YEARS to the day from when we put out our first episode! Pretty amazing, and perhaps a little frightening to consider! Thank you to all who have stuck with us, and thanks to those who have just joined us. Sorry about those early shows.Paste https://feeds.simplecast.com/EOAFriME into iTunes (or your favorite podcatching software) to have new episodes of The Flop House delivered to you directly, as they’re released.Wikipedia entry for Space Jam: A New LegacyMovies recommended in this episode:HideawayWolfwalkersSummer of Soul

On this episode we discuss Space Jam, a new legacy. Starring The Braun James, I translated his name from the French. Hey everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse I'm Dan McCoy. Hey listen that pro intro, that's Dan McCoy and I'm Stuart Wellington, his right hand man. Look at that professional right hand man backing up that professional intro guy, and here's Elliot Kaylen, kind of an amateur when it comes to talking into microphones, but the kind of amateur that is a pro at kids.

Kids love and parents tolerate. I don't know. Kid tested, also kid failed. I did not pass the test when the kids put me to the test. And what kind of a test was that? Like a push-up contest or a test? It was a push-up contest with a toddler and he easily bested me. I was having so much trouble and he can't even stand for longer than a couple minutes of time, but his push-ups were amazing. Because that's the thing Ant-Man told us that

toddlers have the proportional strength of an ant. So they're going to be super strong despite their small size. Did ant man tell us that? Oh, it was baby. I blew up the kid. Yeah, that's yeah. Baby, I blew up the kid. Baby, the Christmas standard baby, I blew up the kid. Baby, baby, I blew up the kid.

We are remember what that we are remember the ICT commercial where Frank Sonata takes a sip and he goes, I blew up the kid. We all remember the ICT commercial where Frank Sinatra takes a sip and he goes, I blew up the kid, baby. Okay, stop fucking around guys. What do we do here? This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie. It's a small business, well, he didn't. And then we talk about it. And this time we watched Space Jam, a new legacy that's the second Space Jam movie.

Thank you. You know, I assume they'll just keep making them and making them. Every journey years, we get a new Space Jam. That's the implicit precedent that's been set. Yeah. And just like me, this movie is all business. The business of representing the properties

of Warner Brothers Studios. Yeah. Guys, nothing really prepared me before Stuart goes into summary. Nothing, all the things I had read about how full of Warner Brothers IP, nothing prepared me for what this movie is. So, I'm looking at what's hearing how Stuart describes it. It was, it was the space jam equivalent of like one of those Oscars montages that's like remember movies.

So, let's, let's, let's, I think we should set the, the, the state, the scene, I guess, the stage, the basketball stage. Well, I just wanna see, I was one thing for that, I wanna say when I, the, sorry, to cut you off, I was trying to explain this movie to my son, and I said, I think I haven't, not since cats, have I seen a movie where I was like,

people made these choices at every step of the way. Someone chose for the movie to be this way, but so wait, sorry Stuart, set the stage or that was a great that was a great that was a great interruption. So we're on the we're on the basketball stage. And so I have never seen the original space jam, which is weird because I am yes wearing a novelty jersey from the original movie space jam saying that I weird because I am yes wearing a novelty jersey from the original movie space jam saying that I'm a member of the tunes squad. In fact, that I'm Michael Jordan, even though he's not the tune. That's the weird thing, you know, he's not a tune in it.

Yeah, he's a ringer. Um, he's a lot of time because he has tune ancestry. So he applied for the passport. They gave him honorary tunes. Citizenship, you know, you can do that these days. So have you guys seen, have you guys seen Spacetown? I did back in the day. I was a little too old to be one of the people

who is an adult now running around being like, no, no, no, space jams are great movie because that opinion, I'm sorry, is incorrect. I know that one is like, what, you know, like we usually take the stance that, you know, we can all enjoy what we enjoy. And you can enjoy what you enjoy. That is fun.

You can, you may enjoy Space Jam. That is, I would prefer that you get joy out of an item than to not, but it is objectively a mess of a movie. Yeah, anything that helps get you through this fucking gray haze of a life, I mean, if it's space jam, you know, go with God. Go, yeah, come on. If it's helping you reach tomorrow, then, then more power to you. But Dan, can you think of a better movie based on a commercial for shoes?

You, do they ever make that a movie of that commercial movie? No, never. Where Spike Lee was like a little doll man. Did that ever get made into? What the little penny, Anthony Hardaway commercials? Oh, is that what it was? Well, there was, because Spike Lee did, Spike, well, you made your own Spike Lee?

No, I don't. Spike Lee directed commercials where he played Mars Blackman, his character from, she's got to have it. So like, that's the amazing thing about those commercials is that Spike Lee imported himself as a character from an independent film into Nike commercials, I think they were. So that's, but they're the commercial.

And he shot a lot of those, like he shot some of those like black and white, right? They're very artistic, which was pretty good. Those are basketball commercials that take place in the She's Got to Have It universe, which is amazing. You know, like that's, if ever an artist was able to bend the powers of mercantilism to shape it to his own needs, you know, that's amazing. But I don't, but I think the movie came first. Yeah, I, I, I, I, you might think you might be thinking of the, I think, Spike Lee unrelated a little penny commercials.

Yeah, by the way, I'm sorry that I came in so hot in space, Jim. I'm a little tired of, I think, the internet thing of insisting X or Y thing that a person has nostalgia for is actually really great. You can enjoy a thing for nostalgic reasons. I do it all the time without being like, this is also well done. I mean, I sympathize with it. Unfortunately, as a child, I had impeccable taste.

So the things I'm nostalgic for are genuinely great. So I sympathize with it, but it's not experience that I have. So. And as long as you can continue experiencing those things that you loved in the exact same way, slightly different, but not actually different than you're happy, it just has to be the exact same way, slightly different, but not actually different than you're happy. It just has to be the exact same adventures.

Yes, as long. It just has to say that it's new. As long as the entertainment media that you are ingesting now, reinforces all of the things that you took as basic assumptions about the world when you were a child, everything's going great. You don't have to worry about it

because new things are challenging. No changes. Yeah, no changes. But there's a lot of changes between Space Jam and Space Jam and New Legacy. Oh, there are. Wait, before we address that, Ellie, I don't think you answered my question. Have you seen the first space jam? Yes, I had that I, it was, my answer is going to be redundant to Dan's. I saw it back when it came out. I was also a little too old to be really caught up in it. As someone who has a really, and I'm sure Dan

feels the same, a very deep emotional connection, like love for the Warner Brothers characters. There is a part of me that has that, what we were just making fun of, where when I see the Looney Tunes characters not being handled the way I like them to be handled, it is uncanny valley repulsive to me. So, space down, the original movie is like, fine, the one, there are a couple things

that connect these two movies. One, you have a big basketball star, who has to play on a team full looney tunes versus a team of monsters. That's the same thing. Two, pop culture references that are already passed there cell by date. In the original space jam, there's like a pulp fiction reference. In this one, there is a matrix reference, which that is a reference that was dated.

Can we do that again now? But let's, I mean, that, like, but, you know, the original Space Jam came out, like, I mean, there are a lot of both. You're after a pulp fake, I guess. Yeah, yeah, it's not the 20-year gap that we're talking about for a major. I mean, it's both too long for it to be a current reference and also not long enough for it to be a classic reference.

But the original Space Jam was about a great athlete and beloved characters coming together to sell shoes. Whereas this one is very different. It's about a great athlete and beloved characters coming together to sell a semi connected IP universe owned by a specific corporate studio. Yeah, it seems a little more vague. Yeah. Well, that doesn't matter. So let's, let's get into the meat of this. And also, and also, Bill Murray was in the old one for some reason. Uh-huh. Um, and he is not in this one. Or he might be in the background. There's a lot of shit going on. Okay. So the owner of this point, he's owned by Warner Brothers.

So yeah, I think he is in the background. There's some ease. He's he and King Kong are high-fiving at some point probably. Uh-huh. Uh, so we open. We have a young LeBron James, who is talking to his mom and his mom is explaining that she can't make it to his basketball game because she's got to work. And he's bummed out. Then I make note that there's a music cue for Ghetto Superstar. I think that's the date when this is happening. I'm not sure.

I mean, then I remember that, I mean, this is set in 1998, that's a year before I graduated from high school, and I remember that song being all over the place around then. So accurate, you know, you can't fault Space Jam a new legacy for not being accurate. You know, there's find me a scene in it where there's an error of some kind of on the historical record. Now I haven't found it looking through it. I have not found it, you know. Young LeBron gets distracted by a magical Game Boy and it

messes up his basketball focus. So he throws that game boy in the trash. Describe the Game Boy being magical because it does seem a little magical, but it's never really explained. It doesn't come back. Yeah. He's handed this Game Boy, which I feel like would have been like an artifact at the time that he received it by 1998.

Well, his friend says I just got a color one so you can have my own one. Oh, okay, that explains my next question because I was like, Ness, question. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Now, he throws away the Game Boy later and I'm like, Iess, question. Oh, ho, ho. Now he throws away the Game Boy later. I'm like, I thought that was his friend's Game Boy, but even so, it's right.

It's a, why are you throwing away? The only question is that, but funny game, just because your coach tells you you gotta keep your head in the game. Like, get your game going. I'll tell you why, Dan. I'll tell you why, because his coach, you might have recognized

his Avan Barkstale from the wire. So he better get his head in the game. His head's to have some bullets in it. So let's just watch out because even even the even the temptation of legal money in legal real estate is not enough for a van to get himself off those corners. He's he's going to as if he's your basketball coach, you got to take what he says seriously because otherwise you're going to get killed and boarded up in an abandoned Baltimore building. So I mean, I think he I think he, I think Avan is just arrested. He doesn't get murdered in the show, but we in a wool wool. No, no, but he, but he murders a lot of people.

Oh, he does. Yeah, he's a, yeah, I guess, I guess the right. I got distracted by your thing. I was thinking about the joke I was going to make. That's part of being a contestor. You were thinking about, you were thinking about spoiler alert. Later, cameo appearance by Michael B. Jordan, who also was in the first season of the wire, tragic. I don't think, oh, yeah, cameo appearance by Michael B. Jordan, who also was in the first season of the wire, tragic. I don't think, oh, yeah, cameo appearance in the movie.

Okay, so he throws the Game Boy in the trash, does not need that thing, or does he? We'll find out later. He, we get some rear highlights. We get some rear highlights for a little branch, aimed over the opening credits, which is good for me, because I have not followed basketball, other than watching the last day in documentary over and over, which by the way, if you haven't watched, you should go watch it.

LeBron James is great. And also talks about space jam and kind of places it within Michael Jordan's history. It's great. Now, what are you guys? Where you guys throw an off at all by how the first like 10 or 15 minutes of the movie, maybe the first 20 minutes is just about LeBron James and how great he is. And there's no looney, except for that one game boy game. There's no looney tunes for a long time. And I was like, this is really a, like a, this just about LeBron James and how great he is. And there's no looney, except for that one Game Boy game. There's no looney tunes for a long time.

And I was like, this is really a LeBron James heavy movie. Like they're really selling me that LeBron James is the hero of the universe. Did that get you guys at all? I wouldn't say that it got to me, but I will say that much like our previous movie, JuJitsu, where I became less interested once the Alien showed up. Another sentence I never thought I'd say, I became less interested in the movie once the Looney Tune showed up. Interesting, okay.

So, okay, so after the opening credits, we're in modern day, we're at LeBron's amazing mansion. He is the, at this point, he is the best basketball player in the world, but he's not the best father in the world. Right, guys? Well, he's not a bad dad. He's not a bad dad basketball dad, but he clearly he wants his kids to follow in his Nike wearing his off-harsh task ball footsteps. And he's not just a follow and not just a follow in his footsteps, but also do it his way, a way that focuses on fundamentals, no hot dog and hard work because when you're on the basketball court, that's

work, which is weird because normally you would think it's a game. You should be having fun, but not for, not for King James here. It's hard to get King. Heavy, heavy is the head that wears the crown that's made out of a basketball that's been cut in half. Because basketballs don't, it's hard to fit that on your head and it's just awkward, you know. It's just, I mean at that point, obviously deflated.

So like, I mean, that's the thing. It looks like you're wearing just like a piece of rubber on top of your head. Yeah, it's like a floppy rubber beret. It doesn't look like a crown anymore. And it throws the weight of your head off your balance. Yeah, and it plays while wearing that, is amazing, and what she does every night.

I first you think it would look kind of like the crown that Jughead wears, but I don't even know how you do that. Like it's like trying to get your hair to look like Tetsuo from Akira, like you just can't do it. Don't even try it. I've tried and failed so many times. I go to every barber and I'm like, I show him the picture and he's like, can't do it. Here's impossible. Don't even try it. I've tried and failed so many times. I go to every barber and I'm like, I show him the picture and he's like,

can't do it. Here's an example of what I want you to do and you just show him a cutout picture from Akira and he's like, let me sit you down. This is the talk I have to have to people. I can't do it. No one can. It's impossible.

Only one person has ever had that haircut and he shows you a photograph of Katsuhiro Atomo with that hair and you're like, that was his magic power. Yeah. I showed my barber a picture of Jocke Hat's hat. And I say, make my hair look like this. And he says, that's a kind of a hat

that I guess people wore at one time. Well, this thing frequently, but. The thing, that kind of hat. So this is something I learned a long time ago. It's what you do is you take a baseball cap and you turn it inside an old-style baseball cap. You turn it inside out and like cut some parts of it because one of the bowry boys wears a hat like that. It's like an old hat turned upside inside out.

But also I have to assume it was a step at some point that Jughead is the prodigal prince of some some far off nation. That's why he has a crown all the time. Yep. The prince of hamburger land. So his son his son Donald. So wait, he's Ronald McDonald's son. It all makes sense now.

Yeah. Yeah. So his son, Dom, wants to build, not Ronald McDonald's son. We're talking about the son of LeBron James. We're talking about Dom, Vin Diesel's character from the Fast and the Furious movies. And we're also not talking about LeBron James's real son. He has real children. These are not them.

These are fictionalized LeBron real children. These are not them. These are fictionalized. LeBron James children. It is a very, it is very strange to see an actor, a guy playing himself in a movie with a family loosely based on his family. And it is weird. It's very weird. And you got to, you got to feel bad for his kids. So I assume auditioned for the roles did not get callbacks and had to see other kids playing. You got to focus on the fundamentals kids.

Get back on that acting court and beef up your chops. Yeah. I'm not feeling that. So, his son, Dom, wants to build video games instead of playing basketball. And he's not just a dream. That's something he does. He has built a fully functional video game prototype that he has put up on the web and other people are playing.

I don't know what platform he's using, but he is already like, he is, he's a prodigy at this point. Yeah. And he wants to go to video game camp, but LeBron wants to go to basketball camp. He is, LeBron is very invested in his children's schedule, which I feel like for somebody that busy and famous, he probably would be like, oh wait, what are you doing next week? And then the kid would be like, yeah, I'm going to this.

And he's like, I thought you were going to that. And he'd be like, no, I talked to mom. He's like, oh, okay. Like he doesn't have, like, I'm just saying, he probably does. Still, I hate to break it to you. I hate to break it to you. That's what my life is like.

And I'm not their busy nor famous. So we cut to, we cut to the most exciting character in the movie. That's right. Don Cheedle playing algae rhythm. He really is. Who is he is? He is kind of the most exciting character. He's incredible.

He's great. He's having so much fun. I love it. And out, I mean, we got to take, take a moment like algae rhythm. Obviously a pun on algorithm, although it does not sound like that. Sounds like you're talking about the plant algae, a rhythmic plant aquatic plant with rhythm. Or Ali G, a non-warner brother's own character.

I have to assume. Leade, they do keep calling him algae, and it shows how few people own fish tanks in the production of this movie that no one was like, it just sounds weird. They're like, yeah, just say it a couple more times. Aren't you hearing it? It's pretty clear.

Okay. So we meet algae rhythm, who is the, like the manifestation of the, an algorithm that lives within the universe of the Warner Brothers servers called serververse. So we go to Warner Brothers studios. Obviously, if you guys are like me the whole time, you're like, where those fucking animaniacs don't show up. Not even in the background. There's no fucking good feathers. Get out of here. And it is, it is strange that the one, that it is a noticeable snub that the animaniacs do not show up in the movie. Yes. And you, you gotta imagine what, what executives wife they slept with that they are now persona

not gratas on the, on the Warner Brothers lot, you know. Yeah. I'm surprised they didn't like fuck with a lament configuration and the fucking Warner brothers and dot pop out or something. But let's go on. Now, LG rhythm is hanging out with Pete who is like a little cartoon like a system robot thing. He's just a robot, right? Like he's not supposed to be a little thing. Yeah, he looks like a clippy style thing, but if clippy wasn't like a paper clip, but just kind of a blob. Yeah. Like a character that probably could have gone through

like one or two more designs. So, and he is scheming to use LeBron to, this is where it got a little bit fishy for Stuart because maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention. He's trying to use LeBron to like, inner the real world or like take over the world, somehow using LeBron's brand to like, tie in with Warner Brothers brand.

I don't quite get it. This part is very not make sensey. And yeah, he's like, there's this new technology that I'm gonna use to escape the serververse because I'm gonna be famous on my own. I'm not gonna need to rely on the Warner Brothers brand anymore. And the only way to do that is to harness LeBron James' fame and make it kind of like a team up between me and LeBron James.

And I will piggyback on him into becoming famous. And now again, this is a, this is a personification of a computer algorithm. The movie seems to have forgotten almost instantly that he has a computer program and not a real Don Cheedle that is living inside of a computer algorithm. The movie seems to have forgotten almost instantly that he has a computer program and not a real Don Cheedle that is living inside a computer box. But the idea is that he is somehow going to,

yeah, he's somehow going to insert LeBron James into the Warner Brothers product line in a way that makes him famous. It's not, it's, it's one of the things where it's like, Stuart, you were right to get lost because it's not, doesn't make sense. And they didn't put it, it's not well done, you know. Okay, before we get to the fruition of this plan,

we're back at the mansion. Dom tries to show LeBron a working version of his video game. It's called Dom Ball. It is in his own words, like basketball only better. It's got power ups. It's like a one-on-one basketball game. You can get style points for doing things.

You can get style points. So things. You get style points. So there's a completely different scoring system. And LeBron takes the controller. He thinks he knows how to play the game because he is a basketball fellow. And he tries to use one of his own moves, a move that is apparently illegal to use in some states. And by doing it, it causes the system to crash

and all kinds of hell breaks loose. It's just a storm's character from the game. It's a beautiful computer setup though. It is like six monitors, it's crazy. Oh, it's a professional computer setup. It is a Neil Perth level of drum equipment type bullshit. He uses his phone to scan in his tarantula at one point for losing the game. I mean, look, his phone to scan in his tarantula at one point. For using the game.

I mean, look, his dad's rich. He can buy, and his dad has clearly up till now, not been paying that much attention. So you know, these kids just using his dad's credit card to just buy whatever computer, civil graphics workstation. Yeah, give me one. What's the company that still uses?

Yeah, that one. Give me one. Running a war hammer store on the upper east side, I was that guy selling stuff to kids using their parents' credit cards. Like John Katz, Mercedes kid. Like, I don't care about that fucking guy. I'll sell his kid whatever war hammer.

Okay, so we, that's some New York politics, everybody. When there are... Very specific show of stewards' ability to put aside his own political preferences to sell to miniatures of orcs and ogres to kids. I mean, I was taking his money. I was repurposing his money to... Oh, no, you were using, again, much like, much like Spike Lee.

You were using the market to your own political and cultural ends in a way that is beautiful. I am a law spike Lee. Okay, so as LeBron exits the room, I have no- I mean, you're both people that I have been in elevators with. You in spite of these. That's another similarity, yeah, sure. Did you tell him that the absolute Brooklyn flavor

that he endorsed is fucking trash? I didn't, this was long before then. I was just thinking, Apple, who wants that shit? I was a student at NYU and we haven't been the same elevator and I was wearing a taxi driver t-shirt and he looked at it quite dubiously and then looked away. So did not appreciate that.

Sartorial choice on my point. Now I have in my notes that is LeBron's leaving his son's bedroom. He does a pretty terrible dab. I mean, I feel like they could have done a second take on that. Okay. I think it's kind of a per... They're painting LeBron as a... Yeah. I think it's kind of a, they're painting LeBron as a, as he's both the most amazing, most graceful,

most talented athlete in the history of the world and kind of a goofy, relatable dad. You know, it's like if Kevin James and, and, and, and, why am I forgetting his name? I don't know, but I'm glad that you, you, you, you, you took the role. Sorry, it's like, it's like if Kevin

James and Jim Thorpe were one person, that's LeBron James in this movie. And also Kevin James and LeBron James are brothers. They have the same last name James. So, you know, yeah. But that's why Kevin James is always plotting to kill LeBron James and steal his crown. LeBron in this movie, because he's the king of Queens, but he wants to be the king of basketball. Like LeBron James, Guys, it all makes sense. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Wow. Elliot's starting to put stuff up on his whiteboard.

There's red string. Hold on. Let me just get some yarn to connect this picture of LeBron James, this picture of Kevin James. Hold on. Oh, it's a one-to-one connection. Yeah. It's a whiteboard. Just use it marker, man.

No, no, yarn, yarn. I can't, I can't, guys, I'm trying to erase the yarn and it's not a racing. Hold on, what am I doing wrong? Just a note on LeBron James as a performer. Like I said earlier. It sounds like you're monograph for your doctorate, a note on LeBron James.

No, I said earlier that this is the rare movie I was less interested in when the loony tune showed up. And part of it is again, yes, I too, and the thing that I was making fun of earlier where I'm like, this is not the way the looney tunes are supposed to be. But, but in these early scenes, like at least, at least there's some semblance of like relatable humanity and LeBron James, not a good actor, but there are a couple of moments where they used his sort of like, like, ultra serious intensity to comic effects that I enjoyed.

Like I enjoyed him, like, interacting with the kid and sort of like, if there was a joke where he, like, kind of like, at his expense of being, like, so intense, like, there was a little fun and he had some presence. But whenever he's been later on called upon to a moat, you know, if you've seen a Saturday night live where a sports star is hosting, you will be unsurprised at the quality of the work there. Yeah, I think he is not. He is in note by no means like an actor, but yeah, LeBron James, I think you're right,

he is like a presence, he has charisma. There's a reason that like, he's the best part of Train Rec, but a lot of it is just him reacting to what's going on, like just being a sidekick basically, you know. Yeah. Wait a minute, isn't Tilda Swinton in Train Rec? Is Tilda Swinton in Train Rec?

Yeah, I think so. I think she plays the boss at the magazine. I think she's the best part of Train Rec. Okay, well, she's the best part of whatever she's in. So that's a different story. But the, the, but he, in this, it's like, you can't, LeBron James works like you're saying, Dan, when someone is playing off of him, not so much when he is forced to pretend that a cartoon rabbit is talking to. Like, and so that he's not, that's not his forte, which is again, it's okay. He's the best basketball player in the world. It's very difficult, yeah, exactly, you know.

It is hard to pretend like that, that also punches up how good a job Don Cheetle is doing because you know that he just stood in a green room for months on end, doing all of this shit. And I think it comes as no surprise anyway that Don Cheetle is an amazing actor. And the Bronx James is a great basketball player with a certain level of first-week.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know what you guys, I certainly was rooting for Don Cheetle most of the movie because he's like, you can feel like, he's the only character in the movie where I was like, he genuinely wants this. This is like, I believe him, you know. Bring him into the real world, he seems great.

Yeah, I think you do that playing a character who is not a character, but again, the idea of an abstract program and a computer that chooses what shit you're going to watch next on the WB streaming platform, you know. I think there's an interview with Tilda Swinton about Tray Wreck, where she's being interviewed about how she got into character because she plays this like a magazine executive and she is dressed up.

It's almost, it feels like a fucking Halloween costume for her because she's dressed up like a high fashion magazine editor and with a spray tan and all this shit. And her response to the questions was like, she's like, yeah, you can just go out and buy these things. Like she was so flabbergasted as that. Like she's like, yeah, anyone could look like this. It's easy. It's very fun.

But she's still the, tell this one, I love for her. Like, if tomorrow, the new space is just like, till the stint, Swinton gets into spaceship, flies off returns to home planet. I'd be like, yeah, buy it. She's great. She's gently one of those people who seems to like come from, just come from another dimension, you know, which is nice.

Okay, so due to the machinations of algae, LeBron and his, or LeBron and his son, his agent go to the Warner Brothers studio to get pitched on the idea of inserting a cartoon LeBron into basically every single Warner Brothers movie or property. And he is pitched by Steven Yuan and Sarah Silverman, who will have this one one scene and you know, they make the most out of it. It's an amazing, it's an amazing waste of talent. Yeah, I have the two of them playing these roles. And if ever, if ever you should have brought in, this is the time to bring in like two improv people and then you shoot them for seven hours just throwing out wild lines that you

can choose to cut into it. Like, like, you don't need people as good or as well-known as these two to be playing these parts. But hey, they got paid for it. Why not? Yeah, absolutely. This LeBron turns them down. He thinks it's a bad fit. He makes jokes about the idea of athlete having to act is always bad. A little wink at the audience. That's us. Well, especially because what we've just seen is a trailer inside this movie for the rest of the movie, which is a story. It's strange for the movie to introduce its premise,

which is we're gonna insert LeBron James into the Warner Bros. catalog and have LeBron James say, no, that's a dumb idea. Let's do it. That's the movie. Yeah. Who would watch that garbage only idiots is what I think it is. Yeah.

At the beginning of the Godfather, someone says to Don Corley, they want to go, do you want to go see this movie about this mob family? It goes, that sounds stupid. Who would want to watch a dumb thing like that moron? Only Slack's shot moron. It's sitting at theater or at home watching HBO Max to see this garbage. Hey, Sam Neal, do you want to watch a movie about a theme park where dinosaurs go are real and they go crazy? That sounds boring. No. Anyway, let's go on this helicopter and go

do I love dinosaur and find out. Okay, so this LeBron James Cerneyam down and insulting him drives algae rhythm to take a desperate action. And he tricks Dom and LeBron into visiting the server room where they are then zapped into the Warner Brothers server. So they have now entered, they have entered virtual reality. Their bodies have gone with them. Everything about them is now in this computerized server thing. So much like the teleportation in the book Rogue Moon by Aldous Budras, their original bodies, their original souls have been destroyed as they are copied bit by bit into a digital

form, which will again later be transferred back into a physical form, but the originals are dead. They have been copied, but you have to assume that their lives have ended. They are now in heaven, and these are duplicates of them running around. The movie does not address this. You believe in a heaven, yeah. Watching LeBron beta at this point. Exactly.

Yeah, because at this point, of course, you're like, is this the end of LeBron James? And of course, no, this is not the end, because death is just another path along our journey that the dull gray curtain of this world is pulled back and you see green shores silver silver silver. Silver bells. Yeah, exactly.

So other ship again, Dolphs up. Yellow stars, rainbows, purple moons, all that stuff. What color are the horses? Yeah, horseshoes are probably slate gray. Horseshoe gray. Horseshoe gray horseshoes. What if they were like they were like moon blue moons horseshoe gray horseshoes star yellow stars. But back up back up.

Well, this is lucky. No, and of course LeBron has to I guess I'm gonna ask of all against Osiris or something. Is that what happens now? Yep. Yeah. Okay. So this is when I wrote my notes.

I don't think we're going to space. Now don't try and correct me and say cyber space is the same shit because it ain't. It is not. Yeah. So you're saying the title has, the title already has failed on the space aspect of it. Yes. But if it does like provide the requisite jam, the words space jam have no meaning. Yeah. Why do I was thinking,

why do I trust this movie now? I see Stuart as one of the kids in the Simpsons going, we're gonna go see an R-rated movie, Naked Lunch. Yeah, Naked Lunch. And they walk out and he goes, I don't think I have two things wrong with that title. Uh-huh.

Okay, so, I'll, I got my jokes mixed up. I'm sorry guys, I got my jokes mixed up. And walk out of Nate, Barton Fink. They walk out of naked lunch and say two things around the title. It's Barton fink that they're excited about. Go, Lucy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So our kid Namsdom and forces LeBron to play in a basketball game with him. And the stakes are, I guess if LeBron wins, he gets to leave and

he gets a sun back and he loses the basketball game. What happened? They stay in the server verse forever. Okay. And that's it. And also, they're doing it for all of them. That's pretty fucked up. That's pretty bad.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. They're doing in front of all of LeBron's Instagram followers. So also, he loses a lot of face. Right. Yeah. And this is the point. Audrey pointed out pretty early that there's a key flaw in the algae rhythms plan, which is the I haven't noticed it. Tell me tell me to say what it is. He has put he has put Lebron's

child as a key part in the the opposition to Lebron. And so all Lebron has to do at any point is to And so all LeBron has to do at any point is to win back his own side to his side to remove that sort of loadstone in Algierhythm's plot, which he takes a really long time to do, but does do eventually. So, but the thing is, Dan, I think you're forgetting an important part of Dom Paul is style points. And I feel like he that Algierhythm is trying to get style points and I feel like he that algae rhythm is trying to get style points on this victory. He's not just trying to win. He's trying to stunt on LeBron James. That's true. It was the crush him by stealing his son.

Exactly. I mean, yeah. Honestly, if someone stole my son, it would crush me. I love it. It's a realistic fear that someone's gonna come along and either just pick up my son and run away. Well, where the one is gonna take your son. Or that now the sun was taken to

apocalypse and turned into what's he turned into like an escape artist. I don't know. Wait, what you talking about Cyclops is son. I would talk about the the is that the planet that fucking dark sides from.

Oh, well, we're talking about different. I think that apocalypse the X-Men villain because he stole Cyclops's son turning it to cable. But yeah, what's up with all this stealing son with a apocalypse new genesis that wasn't a steal,

that was a trade, the pact, it's called. That the war between New Genesis and Apocalypse would end because high father and Dark Side had exchanged suns. Can you remember what it was like in Nicolanda Maria? Scott Free, the son of high father, would be raised by Dark Side, or rather raised in the School of Torture under Granny Goodness.

Well, whereas Orion, the son of Dark Side, would be raised by high father, always fighting the anger inside of him, which he doesn't know is there because of the evil seed of Darkseid. Now, this would have to be a secret pact. Only the two rulers would know. If the sons ever found out, it would undo

the fragile peace between the war-torn industrial world of apocalypse and the peaceful, bucolic world of New Genesis. And so the stage is set for New Gods number one. We begin a new Genesis. So let's get to it after Space Jam. We have a different new thing that's a new legacy of Space Jam.

So Lebron is, he needs a recruited team of basketball players. He's got a limited amount of time. At some point we see a clock, I think. And- Yeah, there's a countdown clock to the game, which He's got a limit amount of time. At some point, we see a clock, I think. And- Yeah, there's a countdown clock to the game, which they forget about for long periods of time. Al is like, I'm gonna give him the rejects to choose from.

So he opens up a portal and Ron, LeBron James gets sucked into kind of like outer space where he's- Wait a minute. Hold on a second. He's falling through space and spilled with planets. Stewart, I think he did go to space. I get, you might be right. And that space is populated by planets.

And each planet, each world is populated by different Warner Brothers properties. So he flies past like Harry Potter planet, he flies past like Casablanca planet. There's a Casablanca planet. He flies past Wizard of Oz planet, and that took me for a moment because I was like, that's an MGM movie, but at some point Ted Turner

bought the MGM library, so that's it now. So it's like, it's the same. It's the same way that you acquired as well as, you know, the same way that... It's the same way that Jack Kirby is now a Disney legend, despite having never worked for Disney, because Disney did buy his characters, you know. Uh-huh.

Uh, and then of course he finally lands on the the reject planet that is tune world. Uh, not cool world, which is the reject to in world, which is, which is, yeah. Don't do not go there. Uh, and he, uh, so he lands and is immediately turned there. Just don't have sex with a doodle if you're annoyed. But wait a minute. Now you're annoyed. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Now you're putting kind of rules on me.

I mean, I don't know how I'm going to feel when I get to cool world. Yeah, Dan. That's the coolest world it could be. Dan, tell me one thing that might go wrong if I have sex with a doodle. Well, ultimately, I guess not much. I think you like turn back and forth between being real and a tune for a while. Yeah, I mean, it didn't work out. I mean, the barrier between the tune. Parable about the HIV epidemic.

Probably not. It doesn't end up great for a Gabriel burn. Let's just say that. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of cool music though. And like, it's like a lot of movies foxes with like bug eyes are like bouncing around the corner. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, just look at, look at all the movies Gabriel Burns and he's, he and Sean Bean, they always get the short end of the stick. They very, very end up with a happy ending.

Yeah, sure. Okay. Uh, so he lands on tune world. He has turned into a tune by this. And we get the first of many inflatable tune jokes, which is great, you know, if you're into that. He gets terrorized by the one occupant of tune world that is Bugs Bunny. Sorry, I got to talk about how Bugs terrorizes LeBron because this was like classic bugs.

Just like kicking it off with me being like mad about the way the character is being used because. Now you mean mad about in the mad about you way where you loved it. No, I mean, I can't remember the exact like Chuck Jones quote, but the whole rule with Bugs Bunny is like, Bugs Bunny is going to mess with you once you mess with Bugs Bunny. Like Bugs Bunny, that is what keeps you sympathizing with Bugs in the cartoons. Like Bugs is not a daffy who might just harass you for no reason. But like LeBron shows up and Bugs is a meeting, like Chasing Around with like Cartoon Steam Roller,

stuff like that. What do you do to earn to this? Yeah, trickster god. And they, I'm gonna chime in and say, I won't go out of it. I felt the same way that the bug's money here. He's not visually off model, but he's very personality wise off model.

He is very much just kind of like a fuck things up for fuck things up, sake, type of character. But also, once the other tunes come in, he's presented as like a screw up, like a guy who's a screw up and is always messing things up, sake, type of character. But also, once the other tunes come in, he's presented as like a screw up, like a guy who's a screw up and is always messing things up and can't get things right. Whereas like the Bugs Bunny I grew up with, again, it's okay to have a different Bugs Bunny.

The Bugs Bunny I grew up with was the coolest guy in the world. And what would happen is he would be enjoying himself, someone would come in and try to kill him, and he would throw, you know, he'd throw anvils at them for a while. But each time, he would like, even if he was overpowered. He never seemed like, yeah, exactly. He never, he was never like a guy who was seen to struggle to get his, the respect of his friends, which is very much like,

or would pine after lola bunny and she'd be like, it's not happening bugs. Like that, it's a very weird shade to paint on to Bugs Bunny, you know. I don't, I don't know that Bugs Bunny, as much as I love him, can handle the psychological depth of being a guy who has had failures in his past that he has to atone for. And there's something like them.

It were introduced to him and he immediately explains the tune world used to be, populate by all his friends, and then algae rhythm showed up and offered, offered them the world, offered them worlds uncounted. Countless words. All the tunes left leaving him all alone. And I was like, my reaction to this honestly was like,

but you could have left too. Why are you acting like you're the victim here because someone came, offered your friends great stuff, your friends were like, I'm gonna take this great stuff. Like you could have gone, but also across the board, just let's just say from the start, all of the looney tunes have gone through a process of at least sort of 70 to 80% blandoning. Yes, they have very little personality. Dan, I think you might be taking issue of the fact that Bugs Money is being crafted as kind of a tune fundamentalist who

believes there's only one proper way to be a tune and does not approve of any other way of life. Or like a tune in cell where he's like blaming the world for his loneliness. Yeah, when he could, he all he could reach out. But you're right, the characters don't have a lot of personality. Daffy has some because it's impossible to remove Daffy.

Daffy's, if anything, probably got the strongest personality of any Loonie Dood's character. But certainly like the other characters each get kind of like a line or two to present themselves. And like, you know, Sam and he Sam is not particularly angry at any point. Elmer Fudds not particularly dumb. Like, I mean, Granny's all about the fucking Matrix dude.

Just like the old Granny. Boy, you know, Granny. It was love. Okay. And I'm like, we're all my favorite characters. Where's Beaky Buzzard? I don't understand. Where are you being Bernie?

Is Mark Anthony and Pussyfoot? Are they Looney Tunes character? Where the fuck are they? I love them. Yeah, come on. Where's the sheep dog and the coyote that are always fighting each other, you know? It's me the really small kangaroo.

Yes. Yeah, hippity hopper, sure. Yeah. Okay, so. Coyote that are always fighting each other, you know me the really small kangaroo Yeah, hippity hopper sure. Yeah, okay, so Where's that little elephant that people see in that one where they all think they're drunk? So in LeBron's quest, where's the dodo from wacky land? We're the three bears what's going on? Where's that super racist black kid that's in that one cartoon that Warner Brothers does not show anymore. It's a bug. I'm pretty sure I know where that kid is. I'm not talking about the Warner Brothers vault.

That's the part of the server verse that even Don Cheatles like don't let it open. Don't let it out. Yeah. Sorry, sorry, Stewart. What are you trying to know? No, I'm just saying that in LeBron James Quest, Bugs sees an opportunity, bring all his friends together. They're going to do this thing.

That's right. It's another getting the band back together kids movie where the movie is playing off of a kid's non-existent nostalgia for characters created before they were born. We saw in country bears, we saw in the muppets. Are you saying that there's references that are probably not appropriate for children in this movie? Because there's a few later on. Okay. I would say the fury road sequence is one that children will be baffled and probably frightened by. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So bugs and LeBron steel Marvin the Martian spaceship. Gotta say I've always been a big fan of Marvin the Martian and it's good to see him for a little bit, I guess. No, you don't, you don't, I mean, yeah, he's barely in it. I mean,

considering he was the main bad guy in the original, right? Well, he was the main bad guy in the commercial that it was all based on space Oh, okay. Space Jam, the original movie, it was, he was a different bad guy. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was an original character. Oh, okay. So they got a LeBron has starts coming up with a list of, and at this point, once again, LeBron is still an animated character. He starts coming up, using a whiteboard, coming up with all the Warner Brothers property characters that they could put together to make a basketball team, Superman, Batman, King Kong, Trinity from the Matrix, et cetera. All of them.

Yeah. Yeah. And just to sort of make a larger point about what's gonna happen next, they try and get all these people, but the loony tunes have gone to all these planets and they end up just grabbing the loony tunes tunes and they make it like kind of a stab at least in world one about like why like they can't get Superman, but they get Daffy and Porky there. But like,

it's never quite clear to me like why they don't get any of these people that would actually be good teammates to help, you know, like bugs is sabotaging. I guess it's because it's a close to sabotaging, Dan. Yeah. I suppose we're supposed to take that away, but it's like, you have to really read between a lot of LeBron James, the greatest basketball player of all time and the hero of the movie is two week to stand up to the arguments of a cartoon rabbit who does not instead of bringing Superman wants to bring bring his friend to duck.

I mean, I feel like that's kind of Bugs Bunny's whole thing. Like no matter how strong or powerful you are, he can trick you. Yeah. Well, here's what happened. So, LeBron James said Superman, Bugs said Daffy, LeBron Superman, Bugs Daffy, Bugs Superman, LeBron Daffy, and Bugs goes, okay, if you want Daffy, we can have Daffy. Just pulled his old trick on him, you know? Yeah.

Okay, so they visit a number of different worlds that are Warner Brothers properties. We get the DC world that is kind of like the animated, like Batman animated series style. It's like the Justice League Unlimited type DC world. Yeah, yeah. They go to the world of Mad Max, which looks like just backup footage of Fury Road.

Yeah, let's slow down here for a second. When you say the world of Mad Max, which looks like just back up footage of Fury Road. Yeah, let's slow down here for a second. When you say the world of Mad Max, these are shots from the movie Mad Max, like actual shots of Fury Road. Yep. And that they have like rotoscoped in looney tunes in different places over the footage of Fury Road. And like, a movie that had only been sort of like mildly irritating to me before this, suddenly became infuriating, because I was just thinking about like, if I were George Miller and I saw this bullshit being pulled, like I would really like start having fantasies

about going in and like like secretly burning down water brothers buildings or something, because like this is, I don't know, it's like you're taking your time. Not technically a threat. Anybody drawing all over my good movie. You say you would do it. If he was George Miller, which he's not,

so cannot do that. I am not gonna do that legally. Dan, I'm going to be the most devilish of advocates. And I'm gonna say two things. One, George Miller made the exact movie he wanted to make. Got it released. It was nominated for a lot of awards made made money off it. It came out. People loved it. I would say if I was a WB exact, we gave you the money to at least distribute this movie. It's a small price to pay that we're going to use a little that we're going to do.

Uh, do you face a little bit of it by throwing Wiley Coyote in there? Number two, I would say. I said they don't have the right to do it. No, no. And I would say number. So for George Miller to be mad, it's like, you want to make this movie or you don't want to make this movie. Number two. And then I'm going to undo my own argument. Number two, if I was, I kept saying to my wife, if I was writing this movie and they said, you can use any Warner Brothers property, I would also go hog wild throwing Warner Brothers stuff into this movie. Every, I'd have the Aeroflin Robin Hood. I'd have James Cagney as a gangster. Again, this is stuff that is glaring by its omission because that was Warner Brothers

bread and butter for a decade. But like, I would have the dancers from the gold diggers of 1933. I throw all my favorite stuff in. So I'm going to zip through what we do get. Okay. Well, I understand the temptation, but on the other hand, it is pretty dumb. And it's also like, it is weird in a kids movie to introduce them to the idea of a movie

that they've never seen. They don't know it. And they do a hammerhead thing with it. Stuart, tell us who else is. Yeah, so what we get, we get a whole bunch of child appropriate material, we get the Mad Max world, we get like a Casablanca world, we get a Game of Thrones world, we get Rick and Morty, we get Austin Powers, we get the Mad Max world, we get like a Casablanca world, we get a Game of Thrones world, we get Rick and Morty,

we get... We get Austin Powers. We get Austin Powers and then we get Wonder Woman. All these things, like none of those are below PG-13, right? No, I don't think, I mean, Casablanca would be probably a PG movie now just because by the standards of the MPAA, there's no swearing or nudity in it, you know? There's gunshots. Yeah, probably about your kids.

So I really sell America. Casablanca. by the standards of the MPAA, there's no swearing or nudity in it, you know? There's gunshots. Probably a bunch of kids. Really sell America. Casablanca. And I also said, the way that they, the way they do it all is, well, the thing is like, when I was a kid, I knew of Casablanca, because it was referenced so heavily,

like I knew the general idea of play it Sam, you know, or play it again, you know, the misquote phrase played again Sam. But like, the idea of throwing in stuff like, I don't know, throwing in stuff like Furious Road, you guys know, flop house listeners know. I'm not a big fan of kids movie jokes that rely on knowledge of adult things,

but also the jokes are so non-existent. Foghorn leg horn is riding a dragon with blonde hair and he goes, I'll say winter is coming and it's like, that's not a fucking joke. It's not a joke. Like, that is a better fall. It's like an epic movie level or like reference as a joke you know in the audience will be like I never thought I'd see foghorn leghorn riding a

dragon also who's like yeah exactly so it's a but I was also confused by fact that there's two different Wonder Woman worlds which is like one woman's in the DC universe but she has her own world to I don't get it yeah well let's talk about the Wonder Woman world, because they pick up Lola Bunny there. And there was, you know, Lola Bunny,

a character invented her. Here we go again. The original space jam. Yeah, and Dan is not happy about it. There's only, he, Dan's like, there's only one woman in the Looney Tunes world and that's granny. Thank you very much.

I mean, notoriously like, or bugs dresses a woman, oh, over sexualized, like the only thing about Lola Bunny and the original space sham was like, we're putting a sexy lady bunny in here and she's gonna be sexy, sexy, and all the tunes are gonna be like, ooh, look at that, hot sexy lady bunny. And that was the only personality

that the female bunny got. But Dan, they're just trying to balance out the obvious physical sex appeal of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Flain, you know. Sure, sure, sure. But this movie, obviously, like, okay, great, you know, we're trying to live it a more enlightened time. Let's not over sexualize this bunny woman that we've put in

our basketball tune movie. And so we're like, okay, let's take away the fact that she's a sex pot and not replace it with a character. Like the fact that she's introduced on Wonder Woman, I like them a scurra scary doing like the Wonder Woman, you know, obstacle course or whatever, like that is like the nod to like, see we made her a strong female, and now she's gonna be in the background of the rest of the movie,

and have like four or five lines. She's very much that she's the female character in a movie who is coded as competent and serious, and that also means she is boring and not likable and mainly scolds the other characters. Like, see, we made her, yeah, we made her a strong woman. That's why she, that's why she mostly tells the other players what they're doing wrong.

Yeah, anyway, it's disappointing. Anyway, so what you're saying is, what if better if we had that hot cha cha sex bunny bunny? Yeah, that's right. We're all the characters, we're just, just they're going boy oh, oh, oh. I was, huh's right. We're all the characters. We're just, they're going boy-yoying. Oh, what? And she likes to be cool.

Yeah, she distracts the opposite team by bending over to pick up the ball, showing her visible thong above her basketball torch. Why would she wear that while playing? How does she fit it over her tail? That was a mean. That was a mean. That was a mean. That was a mean.

That was a mean all over the place. Tweeting on the internet. What did you do with my sexy little, that was- You want that shower scene between sexy little bunny and granny, where they- I've got it in the lot. What is it, the New York Times film reviews? No, no, it's a New Yorker. Anthony Lane is like, this animated children's movie doesn't give me a boner, F minus.

What an idiot. Okay, so meanwhile, algae is tricking Dom into helping him out by being like just a super supportive friend or father figure like he's helping him out. And Dom starts explaining his his video game, Dom Ball, which then he's he kind of algae kind of steals Dom's phone, hands it to his servant Pete who then plugs himself into a USB port and then like, has an orgasm. It's pretty weird. Okay, then we get a training montage.

That's where the tunes are trying to learn how to play basketball. And they're, you know, they're doing all their normal shenanigans, dropping and bills and stuff on each other. And LeBron's like, they're doing all their normal shenanigans, uh, dropping anvils and stuff on each other. And LeBron's like, no, I don't like this. We need to play more traditional basketball. I'm going to teach you and you got to stop being loony. That's where bugs does make the joke. He's like, oh, you're that kind of king.

I thought that was kind of focused on the fundamentals, not in this hot dog and anvil dropping. Mm hmm. So the evil plan is to beat LeBron at a game. They're good. They're not playing basketball. LG surprised them. They're going to be playing dom ball.

And he upgrades, uh, uh, dumb into being, uh, what the captain of the team and he makes all of his stats super high. Yeah, but all the fighters to 100%. Put all the slide is where you can put everything to the top level. That's seen. Don ball, Dan. It's Don ball. If your name is in the title of the game, you're going to get special freedom. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then he also takes scans of various famous basketball players and turns them into

anamorphs. That's and that and he turns them all into his special team of ringers called the Goon squad who'll see more of later. Now I have a question. Are they really animorphs since they're kind of, they don't turn fully into animals. They're just kind of like animal human, you know, hybrid. Hybrid. No, I was just trying to talk about animorphs for a second, but. Okay. I know you love animorphs. They really speak to you on a deep level, which is something I totally understand. And I think it's great. it's great Stewart that you found the fictional universe that works for you. Again, I just feel like we don't want to classify them improperly as animals, have an

animal fan watch the movie and be like, they got all this Warner Brothers IP in here, I bet they got the animals in there too, sorry, they're not actually animals. Yeah, I don't want to mislead people. So, algae shows up at the tunes training facility on Toon World. And he turns all the tunes and LaBron into photo realistic things. Oh, please. So, at this point, we're like, these aren't your daddy's tunes. Yeah, can we just take a moment? I'm sorry.

No, please interrupt me. Oh, what? Let's just go ahead and cannot tell whether that's ironic or not anymore. Why does he have to choose? It could be both. Yeah. I don't like these, the way these tunes look once they're CGI, I'm sure there would be a way to do this.

They're CGI, I thought they were practical, Dan. I mean, that's the wrong thing. They look like meet the fables. They look real in the wrong way. Like bugs looks like a living sort of stuffed animal and Porkey has sort of the waxy skin of a banem too so's sculpture. Like these are not creatures that were meant to be in three dimensions.

They're resigned. Let me just ask you. Let me just ask you, when you're watching the hunter trilogy or what's opera doc or Fast and Furious or Ducamuk, don't lie to me. You've been thinking this would be so much funnier if they had photorealistic hair and feathers. I'd be laughing more if I could see every whisker waving in the wind individually. I am saying, yeah, I do not think they were reconceptualized for 3D in a way that makes them look, say, not unpleasant.

It's very first CGI sonic on this, rather than second CGI sonic, which is still fairly unpleasant. Yeah. It's very, it's very first CGI Sonic on this, rather than second CGI Sonic, which is still fairly unpleasant. But yeah, I mean, to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm, they were so concerned with if they could do it, they didn't stop and think if they should do it. And I think, I think, according to all three of us, they shouldn't have.

Yeah. No, I mean, it is rare that I will say this, but watching Space Jam New Legacy really made me revisit and be happy about the creative choices made in the Tom and Jerry movie, where I thought they did a great job of animating those characters. They interacted with the photo realistic world without turning them into photorealistic animals, you know,

and I wish they could get here. Yeah, I guess this is our big apology to her right now for Tom and Jerry. You're right. It turns out that was a great movie. Sorry to everyone who watched it as a can and has now grown up a year later. And it's like actually it was really great.

Yeah. So, now you can have a basketball game and not have an audience. So algae, some, I mean the Olympics are proving that you can, but continue. Yeah, I'll go with the premise, yeah. Really?

I haven't watched any of it. What's happening, Elliot? It's just like the regular Olympics, but there's no audience. Oh, okay. So all the characters from every Warner Brothers property all come charging over the hill. You see all of your favorites.

Dan, you see Jabberjaw, you see Iron Giant, and of course you see Iron Giant. I don't know if she'll want the other shitty movie but this stuff. And they should have taken the Iron Giant. You said of course you see Iron Giant. I knew she won the other shitty movie. But they should have taken the Iron Giant out because all I could think about was ready player one, but like space ghost is there. But then they've got some odd more choices. Run by and I was very angry because it made me think of how much I love the Grimmlands. I mean, it's weirder that baby Jane is in the background from what ever happened to baby Jane. That's true. That in this kids movie, you have like Pennywise watching a basketball game and the mask.

And I'll tell you this. The droogs from Clockwork Orange there. That was the, I was reading. I was reading, I think the, I think the fairest thing about this movie that I've read is in on the Wikipedia entry, I talked about how there was going to be a peppy lapucine. And that was cut. But then some people thought it was, was be a peppy lapucine and that was cut. But then some people thought it was, was confused why peppy lapucine was cut, but the droogs who raped someone in their movie

are very visible in the audience throughout the almost the entire basketball game. Right? They're like, front row. Like, even if you're going to put them in, like, why would you make that choice? But it's we got to highlight a clockwork orange for all the viewers. We should make it clear that these are not characters from, these are not shots from the movies that have been repurposed like earlier.

These are very much the Halloween costume package theme park versions of these characters. Yes, that's what's crazy. It feels like they didn't have the intellectual property to use these characters. So they're slightly different ones. Yeah, they're like, this isn't Mr. Freeze. This is Mr. Frozen.

How can you sue us? Come on. Yeah. I used to feel it. Yeah. This isn't Pennywise. This is Nickel Dumb. Come on.

You see it's not. But it is. This is mechanical citrus fruit. I'm glad that we're using this as like a backdoor pitch to have us write the names for those like spirit Halloween costumes. I mean, if they want a high-reside view, have me to do it, that way.

Italian plumbing brothers. This is not Batman. It's Night Road and Tiro. Come on, this is, but I will say this is a, it's fairly quickly that an animal. I never thought I'd say this that that the novelty of watching Mr. Freeze, Baby Jane, Pennywise, The Mask, and DeFlying Monkey from the Wizard of Oz watching a basketball game and enjoying it like crazy.

The novelty that wears off pretty quickly. And you get the, no matter what's happening in the game, the characters in the audience are so constantly jumping up and down excited in their seats. And you know that they just brought random people, like random extra performers by assume audition for these roles. They brought them in, dressed them in the cheapest, like, uh, uh, white walker costumes that you could find and told them, okay, jump around and pump your fists in the air for three hours straight.

We're just gonna roll on it. We're gonna use these shots. So, Ellie, you guys are both. You guys are both more Hollywood type, so you can explain the movie magic to me. So you're saying they didn't show them a basketball game with photo realistic tunes versus a goons squad. No, no, somewhere there are, there are files with thousands of hours of footage

of people in against a green screen dressed in terrible, not-off costumes, just pretending that they're super excited about you. A lone or in small clumps to be composited. Yes, there's somebody had to get dressed up in a poor replica of Danny DeVito's makeup from Batman Returns, so that he could jump around and pump his fists

in the air, yelling, add-lived things about basketball. So that they could then get inserted. Oh, so great. Man, so like, what's the next thing we just mentioned, one of the nun like, what's the next two? We mentioned one of the nuns from the devils. What? Yes.

With zoom backgrounds being all the rage, I don't see why they didn't try and make money by selling that footage. But so let's get back to this. Let's get back to the plot here. The best is when the

characters behind them do look like they're interacting with each other and it's like Pennywise and another character are like in an argument about something. That's the movie I wanted to see. So, and now just these Warner Brothers characters, that's not enough of an audience for Al at least.

He starts sucking in people that are looking at their phone so that they are trapped in tune world. They are digitized, they look just like themselves. And they are trapped in tune world. They are, you know, they're digitized. They look just like themselves and they are forced to watch the game. No one questions it. They just immediately go with the flow. We get, we get a sports announcer who I'm not familiar with and low-rel who's great. And they are like a fish, they're not officiating. They're like, they're broadcasting the game. They're doing the play by play.

But the rest of LeBron's family gets sucked in and they're watching it. They briefly try it with LeBron. He tries to explain what's going on. I think they figure it out, I don't know. And then Al introduces this, but what we learn now is that large portions of the human race have now been digitized and their lives are on the line.

So this is no joke. If they, and if, if, if, if LeBron and the tune squad loses, then everybody has to stay in Algorithm's role. And I guess he's just going to exploit them as new IP, like just a random people and just have a least made about them. I don't know. I don't, I guess, I'm just playing. Um, and then, and then Al introduces his team of monsters or monsters called the goons squad.

They're not the monsters. The monsters are the other team from the first movie. Yeah, who could be seen in their small form, I guess, everyone's well. Yeah, but they're pre transformation form. They're seen in the audience. Yeah. Yeah, which is interesting. So so the the first space jam movie would be in this universe, right? Yes. So in theory, the opposing team could have, I mean, it would have been amazing if Michael Jordan from space jam was in the audience watching this, just going, yeah, yeah, yeah. High five in King Kong and, you know, sharing tacos with the,

or with space ghost and or tearing up all looking at an iPad. That's the Michael Jordan. I know love. Michael, Michael, it's Michael Jordan's in the audience just just have an Abier with Al Jolson from the jazz singer just enjoying this movie alongside all the other Warner Brothers properties here's I wanted to some a point I want to make that I've had just do a point I want to make was if you've ever taken the Warner Brothers studio tour it's a lot like this where at the start a very

bored Ellen DeGeneres was clearly been green screened into the Warner Bros. studio a lot. She's like, let's take a look at some of the scenes from the Warner Bros. movies we've loved, and they're almost all movies from the past 15 years. It's like the Harry Potter movies and like the other recent hits, and then you'll get a shot from Casablanca. And it's like, it is amazing to me the cultural staying power of Casablanca.

That is a movie that is 80-some-odd years old, and it is the only one from pre-1995 that Warner Brothers seems to highlight it all really. And this is a studio that's over 100 years old. Like they have over 100 years of movies to point to. And yet, people's cultural memory goes back to just Casablanca and everything that they saw saw recently and so this movie is like that like there's not a lot of one of those characters pre

the matrix basically you know except for for some reason i guess if they had made that huge show then then baby Jane wouldn't be showing up in the background either but i don't know so funny the uh... okay so uh... he introduces a team of the Goon Squad led by LeBron Son Dom. He has been, I guess, like kind of like... Kind of called them the Dom Patrol. That's another Warner Brothers IP. I feel like he's like kind of brainwashed at this point.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is like LeBron makes such a short attempt at being like Dom, hey, he's pinning you against us. This is not good. And then he goes back to his wife, Dom's mother, like, I don't know what I can do. I'm like, you like, try for like 30 seconds. You didn't even explain the stakes, like, hey, he's gonna trap all these people in here

if I don't win this game. I feel like she would be rooting for her son over LeBron. I don't know why I'm interesting. I mean, it's every mother's dream to see their husband defeated by their son because half of the son is them. And so it's like you, this person who is not, who's 100% not me, has been defeated by someone who is at least 50% me. Like, that's how you win the battle of parenthood.

That's the map of parenthood. I think he's not brainwashed so much. It's like he's genuinely mad at his dad and Don Chital is taking advantage of that. And as someone who has been mad at his dad at various points, I know neither of you guys have ever had issues with your fathers. That's the, it's like, I totally get it.

That at a certain point, you're like, I wanna do the thing that my dad does best, that he's most famous for. And I'm gonna do it in my way in a way that he loses to me. Because, you know, that's also, you know, according to Freud, that's the basis of all son psychology, and then he's just gonna carry off his mom to the marital chamber and say,

I claim my prize now. Now, I'm the father and the family. I'm not, yeah. Walk further down that. That's not featured in the movie, just to be clear. So, that's not a scene in the film. So the game begins. People all over the world are watching it on LeBron's Instagram.

The Goon Squad immediately takes a lead. They start scoring astronomical amount of points because once again, this is not basketball. They're playing dom ball and there's style points and there's all different kinds of ways to score points. By the hat, they're up by a thousand points. They're up by a thousand points. They're up by a thousand points. And the the tunes are kind of following directions from LeBron, who again is is wants them to focus on playing a normal basketball, following the fundamentals, but as I've addressed, one of the opposing players is like a spider

woman, the other, it turns from water to fire and instant snake woman who has to be like traveling, she's like traveling all the time because you can't dribble. It's true, yep. There does also, it doesn't appear to be a referee in the game, right? Oh, wait, I guess Pete is kind of the referee, but he chose the whole time for the-

It stresses the rep, well, one that's gone. When the referee is the side, is the henchman of the owner of the opposing team. Yeah. It's an unvery game, yeah. It certainly takes LeBron James, though, a long time to realize, oh, wait, we cannot win this game by traditional basketball means. Like, that does not appear to be the way to win this game. Set in his ways is the LeBron James of this movie. But,

Dan, that's, that's, that's, come on, they got him up a tree. There's Ron Rocks Adam. He's got a figure out how to get down from that tree. It's screenwriting 101 fundamentals. Yeah. By the way, the whole, like, the last 50 minutes of this movie is the game, which I honestly, like, can't complain too much about. Like, I don't want them to, like, spend that much time getting to the game.

Like, this movie, look, if you want a weird basketball game between tunes and monsters and stuff, like the movie will deliver on that promise, but it also is like, wow, they really are doing almost a full hour of this basketball game. Yeah, it's not what I want from a movie, but if you're making a movie called Space Jam that involves LeBron James and the Looney tunes that this is what you're promising and they unfortunately deliver in a sense. Yeah, so it's looking grim. Yep. Are there any particular?

We're not up to the scene. There's a scene that comes up soon where I maybe genuinely angry and but we haven't gotten to it yet. annually angry and but we haven't gotten it yet. Okay, so as we said, by the end of the half, the the Goon squad is well-nly, the tunes are losing and they go to their locker room, kind of defeated. They have, they have a little bit of a half-time pep talk, which features a surprise appearance by Michael Jordan, Michael B. Jordan, who seems to have a little bit of fun and then he bounces, he's out of there.

This is the here's where they missed. Here's not to hit, not to hit on the, keeping the dead horse of the inherent racism of much of American pop culture. But I wanted, I wanted that they're like, Sylvester, how did you not know, because Sylvester's like, I found Michael Jordan and then Michael B. Jordan walks out. They're like, how did you not know they weren't the same people? And I wanted Sylvester to go, I'm racist. I don't know.

I can't tell them apart. I'm racist. I was probably in the script, Elliot. Yeah, they just. Probably. If you don't like it. They shot one take of that and it just didn't test well. If you don't burn a Warner Brothers character by having them admit to being racist, why not

Sylvester? Of all of them. Does anyone like Sylvester? No. Especially they'll say racist with a list, but you know, they're going to laugh. Yeah. Oh, that'll be, again, yeah, they should have done it. It reminds me of a, there's a lot of Loon-Toon characters

that are not, that are beloved because of their association with the Looney Tunes, and I feel like he's one of them, and it reminded me of when they decided to cut Peppy La Pue from the movie. There was an article that came out that was like, Warner Brothers announces no new Peppy La Pue vehicles for the next year, and I was like,

they could have run this article any point in my life. Like, there has never been a demand ever for a peppy-lip-you vehicle. Like, yeah, why don't you, that do not give Warner Bros. credit for any of that decision, you know? The, so, after a long internal investigation, Michigan J. Frog not giving his own movie franchise.

Yeah, okay. So after Michael B big join leaves. LeBron seems to learn his lesson. He explains that the tunes can finally be loony again. He gives bugs the play marker. He realized that basketball should be fun. It shouldn't be work. And he gives up a little bit of his control to the tunes. And think that's gonna pay off in big dividends. It certainly pays off right away as Porkey Pig gets into a rap battle. Yep, we learn the true meaning of style points

as almost immediately they get into a rap battle where. Why did that happen? I blinked for half a second. Oh, I believe Don Cheetle said something that rhymed and it kind of indicated that they were entering the rap battle world of the WB universe. And Porky Peg is introduced in his new persona, the notorious P.I.G. and he does a little bit of rapping.

Everybody's loving it. You know, everybody's tapping their toes. They said that the first movie's based on a commercial. This scene will be based on those t-shirts that were real popular for a while, where the Loonew's characters were all wearing like oversized jerseys and lots of rings and chains. He's a CMOS.

That was a very mild sort of like mid-jimpo basic rap, but everyone thinks it's the best rap and they've ever heard. So much so that there's no response. Yeah, don't you, don't you, don't you, is silenced by Porcupix rhymes. Yeah. He's so shocked that it happened. The tunes are allowed to be loony. They get to use and we get to see all of our favorite bits, you know, Tweety Bird waiting for the train to arrive. Granny again does matrix stuff. We're introduced. Dom is taken out of the game. They sideline him,

which is a kind of weird choice. And they bring in a new Goonsquad player, Kronos, who can slow time down. Once again, it doesn't seem like it's part of the rules, but regular basketball. No, and it's because every movie now needs a scene where somebody's running around real fast, and everyone else is slowed down. Really fun. Like manipulate things. It's just so fucking funny. So it's so fucking funny and like cool.

Like it's just cool. Ellie, can I guess, dude, we passed the thing that made you angry and kind of guess what it is? Well, guess what it is. I think we may have passed it. Guess what it is. Is it the fact that the coyote paint something on a wall and the road runner runs into it?

No, that is not it. I'm touched that you think that that would make me mad. I did get irritated when Bugs Bunny pulled that on LeBron early on, because I'm like, that's a wild coyote road runner joke. But no, what you might feel a little bad with the thing that made me mad was when algae is yelling at Dom and LeBron is watching this

and doing nothing. And I was like, fuck you. You did not deserve to be a yelling at Dom and LeBron is watching this and doing nothing. And I was like, fuck you. You did not deserve to be a father at that moment LeBron. You were watching your son, your son is being verbally abused by a computer program and you're sitting and watching and doing nothing because your head's in this dumb ass game. Step up and defend your son in front of this asshole dick.

So that got me really mad. Again, Elliot, it might help you to know that the actor playing his son is not his actual son. So even in the fictional, even in the fictional, I know it wasn't really happening, even in the fictional world of this universe, the idea of being as, and maybe this is just because I'm a dad, being a father and seeing an authority figure yelling at my son, basically, and telling him, you suck, you're not good at this, you don't deserve to do this. I would have to get up off my opposing bench and walk over and tell him to stop at the very least

rather than being like, oh, well, this is just motivating me to win this cartoon basketball game. It just made me so mad that LeBron sat there and watched while that happened. Anyway, back to the cartoon basketball game. Sorry, but so damn, it was the genuine emotional reality of like having been a kid, having been a kid who would get into arguments with authority figures and having my parents stand up to me to see LeBron James, the hero of the movie, not do that, was very painful to me. No, no, okay. I wasn't expecting a genuine emotional trigger. I thought it would be, again, a silly, but I like that after the many years of knowing me, you thought that I just got mad

because the wrong person ran into a painted scene. Yeah. And again, like we get a bunch more bits, the tunes start to win. We do get as a Hoosier. I greatly appreciated seeing Don Cheetle doing a Bobby Knight joke, famous basketball coach of Indiana University. There was a bit, they try and bring the time stopping Kronos' character. He tries to do his thing again. Tunes reveal their secret weapon is Granny who does some like Matrix moves. And she also messes

with his time turner, sends him to the fucking beach from old and the guy gets super old, like a robot. And it's hilarious, right? That's amazing. She kills it. She can science him to an early death. And it was like, wow, this is a rough game. Yeah. It becomes like steam punk here as he gets old. I can't imagine that idea.

Yeah, it's great. So wait, so that, so I only heard, I've only heard second hand about this old person beach. What is exactly, it's a beach we turn into an old person? Yeah, Dan, what's the deal here? I haven't seen this, I'm not familiar, but I believe yeah, it's the least popular tourist attraction. Sure. They basically just have to like,

dump people on the beach. Like, hey, maybe you'll like this beach. I don't know, it turns people old. I mean, can you dump them on so that they're like, well, I'm really dying to hit my 16th birthday so I can drive. Right, right. I'm only 14.

Can you just dump me on it long enough so I get to be 16? Yeah, yeah. What if I'm just on the beach for like a couple minutes? Does it ageify your driver's license? I mean, ageify. Maybe if you like go on and you're like, you're in a harness

and a helicopter pulls you off the beach at the exact right moment. I know the good. If someone is willing to risk getting old to collect that sand, because I assume the power is in the sand, and people could take, like, kids could take it a little bit of a time,

instead of having to deal with the old, antiquated analog Zoltar technology, that they needed to use in the past to get old. So that they could finally go into the city, get a job, and then touch a woman's boobs. Now you can just get a little bit of that sand and you can have the same effect. I think they did more than that, my friend. I mean, I'm just going about what's on screen. But anyway, if you wanted to age fast, you had to go to Rye Playland.

And that is not conceivable for most people. Now, do you think that the old beach would also serve a purpose for say, I don't know, You wanted to age fast, you had to go to a ride playland. And that is not conceivable for most people. Yeah. Now, do you think that the old beach would also serve a purpose for say, I don't know, like parents who are like, I am dying to have my fucking kids out of the house. I want to send them to college. Yes, very much so. I can't do these difficult middle school, high school years. Let's just age a five this kid up, send him away to whatever college we can afford.

Whatever, whatever the question is. Well, because that's the thing, usually you would save up their whole lives for college, but if you're aging them quickly, you don't have as much time for the companions. Put your bank, can you put your bank account on the age of five?

That's a good question. What if you deposited some sand in a safety deposit box with the bank age and then your money gets older and therefore more of it? Stuart's plan is for people who hear the song, Kat and Cradle, and I'm like, yes, yes, this is what I want. So, if I were to get there someday. Now, the question is, when you get old, do you get the memories of the time that you passed

where you're just instantly that age? Because you don't want to send to college like an eight-year-old in an 18-year-old's body. That is trouble. That is teeth-rupple. That sounds like a couple of my college performance reports. Okay, possible. I'm just saying, they need a generation of jacks, starring Robin Williams, and that's a problem. You don't need a generation of those.

Generation of jacks. Jack, not in this movie in any way. Okay, so that's a one of our brothers' property, but. So around here, the tunes have basically tied the game. LeBron and his son patch things up, they hug. And again, I paused it and I was like, there's 20 minutes left. So, algae. Whenever I watch one of these movies now,

I pad in roughly seven to 10 minutes of credits. Because with all the special effects, it's long credits. So, algae realizes, he's lost his'll, he realizes he's lost his captain. He's lost his time turner fellow. His team needs a new captain. It's going to have to be him. So he uses a variety of technology to make himself into a giant CGI Don Cheetle. They play some basketball.

He scores a dunk on LeBron and then he makes a training day reference, which is great. And then he follows it up with it. Yeah, look, for people who are not going to watch this movie and I do not recommend it, let us explicitly say the reference because it is one of the times I'm like, okay, I like that. Where like Don Cheedle says, the famed line from training day King Kong ain't got nothing on me. And King Kong, who is in the audience, just does a little huffy like arm cross.

And to see that beautiful giant ape do such a delicate movement, was pretty funny. Yeah, I mean, let's say there's an animators, let's take them, let's do a round of applause for them guys. You can work on that, yeah. I'll throw that round of applause in there. And you know, I wonder who got the lucky dream of getting to go home every day being like,

I spent today working on the facial expressions for an animated done cheetle. Like, this is what I wanted. I will say, there's a lot, there's like any modern movie, there's a mixed bag of really great effects that work out great and effects that are not working out so well. I was talking to my brother-in-law, who is a Disney technology animator,

and he was saying that he hadn't seen the movie, but I was describing to him and he said, I bet you, he said, not knowing it, I bet you they farmed out the effects to a lot of different effects houses. And that's why some things work and some things don't quite work. And I wonder if that's true. So they realize they don't have much time left. The point scoring is kind of strange because with the whole style points thing, it's kind of difficult to determine how close the actual game is or like how they're going

to win or not going to win. It's so weird because at any moment you could suddenly get 500 points. So yeah, I don't know. It was hard to maintain the level of tension that I was expecting. So LeBron decides. Considering the stakes are, all of you will be trapped as ghosts in the machine forever if you lose. The basketball game stakes are very hard to read. But when you can stick Wiley Coyote into a multiplying machine and suddenly get 800, 900 points,

it's hard to know how much time means. Definitely, who's lined is it anywhere scoring? I mean, the fact that Clive Anderson was seen working the board. As a nice touch, I assume he's a one of other property. Yeah, so LeBron suggests that he is going to risk a deletion, risk becoming like a glitch by performing his illegal step-back maneuver that he had previously done while playing the game. And everyone's like, no, you're going to die.

And he's like, I'm not a tune. I can do whatever I want. But then, of course, in the middle of And he's like, I'm not a tune. I can do whatever I want. But then, of course, in the middle of the game, Bugs decides to do it himself. And you're like, no, Bugs, don't sacrifice yourself, I guess, I don't know what the stakes are. So, LeBron catches the ball.

And as we find out later, the stakes are incredibly high and also nonexistent. Yeah. LeBron catches the ball. He scores a basket, the tunes win. Everybody gets zapped home. Bugs is glitched. The game is over.

Al and Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al.

Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al.

Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. Al. that's all folks. He like turns into a star. He turns into a star that flies up to heaven. And I'm like, what do the things do? You're like, is this the end? And I'm like, no, Dan, this is not the end. It's also death is just another step along our journey.

A blister that's a dangerous message to send out. The dull gray curtain of this world is pulled back and all is silvery wise. And soon the world is seen behind. The fact that, and again, as someone, I have a, I feel like I have a real emotional love of Bugs Bunny and those characters, I have a real deep connection to them. They mean a lot to me. And yet, there was, I had the same reaction when I'm like, wait, am I supposed to be worried that Bugs Bunny is dying? Like, I don't, this is not since it was that,

there was that animated hero's fight drugs special when I was a kid where like Bugs and Raphael or Michelangelo and a bunch of the, all that Saturday morning lineup character in service, right? Yeah, in service. If it's Dave's and Sarabas was in there. Yeah, the Larry Margers Bean World characters were all in service, right? Yeah, and service. If it's in service was in there. Yeah, the Larry Marters bean world characters are all in there sure.

Maggie and Hopi. Yeah, they're all con. Conqueries. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Anyway, they, they, they, I went out when I was like wait, just go on. Concreate is superhero, right? Well, he's a superhero in a world without villains, you know, he has super powers, but

he mostly uses to rescue people or write memoirs. But the idea of what I was young that like, played Bugs Bunny cares if I do drugs or not, like this doesn't square with my understanding of the character. That's how I felt with this, where I was like, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be worried that Bugs Bunny is dying now. I don't understand. Yeah, I wasn't worried that it was only done, but it seemed wild that it happened. It was, and ironically, it was like, they're going for the same emotion that the speechless image after Mel Blank died had where it showed a microphone with nobody standing on it and all the, and the Loonie Tunes characters were like bowing their heads in grief. And it was like, they're kind of going for that, but like, that was about the death of a real person who existed. This is like, I don't,

there's not part of me that, and as the movie, I was like, but he is a cartoon, right? So they could just draw more of him. And the movie then bears you out on that. But anyway, can you, so much when he dies, he ascends to having as a star. Okay, so, we now, again, the gray curtain of the world, uh, world pulls back and we are back in the real world multiple weeks later. Lebron is taking his son, Dom, the basketball camp. So we thank he's carrying a basketball. So if that's, you know, that's a prop. Uh, you got to bring your own basketball, the basketball camp really limits. You can go, you know, uh, the, so it turns out he, he tricked his son.

He's not taking him to basketball camp. He's taking him to what video game creation camp. I don't remember what they called it. Yeah, it's a video game coding camp. And he's like, okay, you won't be needing that basketball. And his son's like, I'm going to keep it. And he's like, oh, wow, the students become the master. His son leaves.

And then you gotta imagine the rest of that coding camp is just him bouncing that basketball off of other kids' heads going nerd, nerd. I'm a jock, nerd. Yeah. And then Bugs Bunny shows up and we get a little bit of outro goofs where Bugs is like, you can't kill me, I'm immortal. Yeah, because he goes, he goes, you gotta know, you can't kill a loony to, like, and loony

tunes don't die. And it's like, what? What was the death scene about then, Bugs? What? That was what, like, if you're good at it. It's a cycle, like fucking Ragnarok, Dan. Yeah, it's just like the death of Baldur. It happens over and over again.

That's what I'm saying. I wasn't, he's just like Baldur. I certainly wasn't mad at the movie for removing the stakes that I didn't think were there in the first place. I didn't think the movie was gonna kill off Bugs Bunny. It was so funny. It was so funny. Bugs Bunny.

The movie ended and then they're just at the end said Bugs Bunny. It was so funny. It was so funny. Bugs Bunny. The movie ended and then they're just at the end and said Bugs Bunny, 1941 to 2021. And then the next scene is the head of Warner Brothers being, that's right, we are retiring the Bugs Bunny character. He will never appear in anything again. And they take all the Bugs Bunny memorabilia and they bury it in the desert.

And they pour concrete over it. They go, Bugs Bunny is now only a myth and a memory. Not concrete, the character though. You can't. No, no, they don't work physical. All Chad weeks concrete on there. No, no, they don't. How he belongs to the ages. No, I didn't think we are. But aren't you giving up millions of dollars by ending any, and Bugs money thing? Yes, we are, but we feel like showing him the respect that he deserves to do justice to his sacrifice and the choice he made in space jam a new legacy. We will never bring him

back. But aren't aren't you? What if a future Warner Brothers executive decides to bring him back impossible? We are also destroying all the original Bugs, Money Cartoons, every piece of documentation, and we are making a legal oath. Everyone, I wonder, brothers, that this will never happen. And if someone does try to bring him back in the future, this judge has declared through an injunction that we can kill that person in order to maintain Bugs Bunny's honorable sacrifice. And in exchange, we will build this statue

with an internal flame to Bugs Bunny. Thank you, Bugs Bunny, for sacrificing your life. Thank you. Again, the statue is not a physical representation of Bugs Bunny because those are illegal now. Yeah, yeah, it's just fire. It's just fire, rough action. It's a caron with fire at times. And then they leave the podium, Joe Biden walks up as President of the United States,

I am declaring all flags will fly half mass forever in honor of Bugs Bunny's sacrifice to recognize that he will never appear again and that he is the ultimate hero of all reality. I know what you're thinking. Flag, uh, Flagstaff creators don't just make your staff twice as big. That's not cool. No, no, same size. We're doing half-mass. Because I am creating a new department of Flagstaff height that will go across the country checking all Flagstaffs to ensure they are regulation by... And the height of flagstaffs to ensure they are regulation by the flagstaff Arizona will actually be lowered. Flagstaff Arizona will also be halved. No rooms on any of the buildings. All two

story houses are now one story. All one story house are now half story. And now half stories you have to go into the ground to get to them. Or if you're very short, maybe that'll work. In addition, the words, bugs and bunny are now stricken from the English language in America and punishable by death, saying them. You may always say insects or rabbits. Yes, so the movie you- In his absence, his absence from life

will be recognized within absence from memory and also the collective culture. A open wound, a lachuna that will never be filled in order to bear our immortal grief, an open wound to threaten a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a Lady Bugs will forever be known as Lady. Yes, very true. Bugs meaning in cyclopedia. Brown novels is now just meaning, or perhaps rabbits meaning, Bugs Malone, similar, rabbits Malone. Let's talk about bunny.

You will no longer be allowed to call someone your honey bunny, they will be your honey rabbit or just honey. Do you have any other questions? Any other questions here? Yes, the tricks rabbit, his name is tricks rabbit, not tricks bunny. He will remain the same.

We are not eliminating the animals of rabbits, but the word bunny is no longer round. But looking for a rising bugs bunny, if we did eliminate all rabbits, you're right. Let's do it. No more rabbits, the United States. What about a bug's life? There's an apostrophe in there.

Does it the same? Because it's not spelled the same as good question. It is spelled the same with an apostrophe That's just a that's just a plural possessive that will now be called an insects life All prints will be changed at Disney's expense. They understand and as a brother studio They understand the great sacrifice Warner Brothers is making representing the great Savahoyce bugs bunny made again in the hit Film space jam and new legacy which now according to the constitution is reality we are living in a simulation based on space jam and it is all the four thousand page binders we've handed out each one of you every

no i wasn't expecting any of that to happen but i did expect some bit more of the explanation than like, eh, I didn't die. Oh no, yeah, you expected something other than, it was all a goot. He doesn't even say it was a goof or a joke. He just says nothing can kill us. And also the fact that Bugs Bunny is not dead and is now walking around the real world

with no explanation. He was just IP in the world of the servers and he's like, all my friends came with me. Hope he got bunk beds at your house. It's like, wait a minute. So can these characters just enter our reality whenever they want? Or is Jason gonna walk through that portal?

Like what, there are a lot of scary things. Like we saw the droogs and King Kong at the gate. Are they suddenly in the real world? That's frightening. We're gonna have to create some sort of ultron to protect the world from what's coming now. I guess so. So I'm gonna say different company, but that's okay. So that is, I guess that wraps up that's gonna put a pin on Space Jam and New Legacy.

We're probably the 500th podcast to cover this movie. Yeah. Danny, listen to a couple. Did we say all the exact same bits and jokes? Do they also talk about Bugs Bunny's death and the ramifications? Not the ramifications, don't think? Like we did, I'm a bit bamped in about half of an episode on it. So I know blank checked in three hours or something.

Jesus Christ. I knew legacy, but let's part for the course. Hey guys, I think that's okay. You know what? A lot of people have done book reports on the great cat's speak. Go ahead and read it, do a book report on it. It's a great book. Obviously a work of art of this magnitude demands multiple interpretations and multiple analyses, you know. So do we have to go more than three hours then?

We actually, yeah, I guess so. I guess so. I think so. Okay, Stuart, start summarizing the movie again. We open in meteor res. We're on his alive. We did. I do. I to. He's a little kid. We saw Griffin for a little while last night and the glint in his eye when he, the glint in his eye that we would have to go through and the weariness in his heart that he had seen it

was something to see. Okay, let's move on to final judgments. Whether it's a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked. I'm going to say like yes, Elliot, I was like I similarly thought of cats in the sense that this is like one of the most misbegotten giant budget Hollywood movies that I can remember in my lifetime. Unlike cats, it is not a shot of pure joy. Oh, no. Just a mystery after mystery. It reminded me of like when I was a kid when I was like 12 or 13, I remember thinking like, oh, what an awesome movie it would be if like all of my favorite monsters were in the same movie together. Like if like there's

some like some the plot was like somebody figured out how to bring like the Grimmlands out from Grimmlands and put them with Jason Forries and the Zeno Morph and like to fight them. And this movie is proof that that's why you know children maybe not the best storytellers, a bad idea that should stay in a child's mind, do not pan out as a film. I'm just going to say it was bad, bad. Yeah, I recently, so I recently watched Ready Player One, and I mean, I think there's some obvious comparisons because they both just like mush all kinds of garbage together.

And I feel like the trash could factor. Yes, and I was kind of hoping that Space Jam and New Legacy, because it kind of takes everything less seriously, it would be more palatable to me. But no, it's just kind of a weird mess of a movie. Obviously, Don Cheetle's performance is great and he's fun. And yeah, it's just a it's a bad, bad movie. I don't, I don't recommend it.

I think, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a bad, bad movie. All that be, I agree with you guys on what you said. There seems to, it's like we're, we're learning that there's a diminishing return to heaping beloved characters on top of each other into a sort of pile of carrot, like that there's a reason that like Godzilla's great, King Kong is great, you put them both in a movie, somehow the movie's not quite as good. Like there is a demultiplying effect, a dividing effect, I guess,

when you have all these characters in there. And, but I can't, again, I can't fault the creators in the movie, everyone involved in this movie. If you came to me and you said, you're gonna make a movie, again, I can't fault the creators of the movie, everyone involved in this movie. If you came to me and you said you're going to make a movie, it's the Looney Tunes and every Warner Brothers character in one movie. The only stipulation is it has to be basketball. I'd be like, sign me up. I don't care how it turns out.

Like, just to be able to sit down and write the words, Bugs Bunny dunks the basketball through the basket as the droog's watch on in an ecstasy like but it's really not a if you if you love the first space jam go back and watch it again. You know and if you love the Loonie tunes go watch like Loonie tunes cartoons. There's better versions of every single thing in this movie including LeBron James and watch or watch the last dance. Yeah. And if you like combining IP just buy any t-shirt off the internet. Yeah, that'll be great. There you go.

Video games. Video games. Video games. You like them? Maybe you wish you had more time for them. Maybe you want to know the best ones to play. Maybe you want to know what happens to Mario when he dies? In that case, you should check out Triple Click. It's a podcast about video games.

A podcast about video games? But I don't have time for that. Sure you do. Once a week, kick back as three video game experts give you everything from critical takes on the hottest new releases. To scoops, interviews, and explanations about how video games work. To fascinating and sometimes weird stories about the games we love. Triple Click is hosted by me, Kirk Hamilton, me Jason Shire, and me, Maddie Myers.

You can find Triple Click wherever you get your podcasts and listen at MaximumFun.org. Bye! Are you riddled with guilt over your TBR pile? Are you filled a shame about a book that you just can't seem to finish? Are you having regrets because grad school killed your love of reading? We're reading glasses and we're here to help. I'm Mallory and I'm Briette. Let us absolve you of all your reading guilt. Second on a book you don't like? We'll help you dump it. Can't figure out

what to read next. We'll recommend something in your real house. Can't decide where to buy your books from. We'll point you in the right direction. No matter what you read or how you read it, we'll help you do it better. Bring glasses every Thursday on next Monday. Hello, this is Dan dropping in from my present, this episode's future, your past, to tell you. We hadn't announced it at the time we recorded, this episode's future, your past to tell you.

We hadn't announced it at the time we recorded, so we're adding this on after the fact that we are doing a streaming live show. The world is still too uncertain for us to get out on the road and see you all in person like we might want to do and hope we will be able to do at some point. But for right now, we are returning to you

over the internet, our natural habitat to talk to you about super Mario brothers or super Mario brothers, depending on your preference. It's gonna be discussing that famous flop from 1993, starring Bob Hoskins and John Legg-Wizamo as the titular brothers and Dennis Hopper as the bad guy. And it's a $10, it's a ticketed show.

$10, you can get tickets by going to theflophouse.simpletix.com. That's ticks with the TIX, the flop house, simpletix, TIX.com. It will be on Saturday, September the 25th at 9pm Eastern 6pm Central. We're trying to split the difference between time zones. But if you can't watch it live, it is, I gotta say it's fun to watch it live. There's chat functionality. You can chat with other Flophouse listeners, but if you can't watch it live, worry not, your ticket gets you access to the show for another week after the actual show was done.

And it's got great stuff. Along with talking about Super Mario Brothers, we also have our With talking about Super Mario Brothers, we also have our PowerPoint presentations like we do on tour with the added bonus of having them all slowed down because of the internet. So our timing is off and you can laugh at us for that. We got some ask the floppers. You can throw some questions at us via Twitter, and we'll respond. There's other stuff we're going to do, other fun stuff that we don't want to spoil at how you sign.

But if you are interested in this, again, you can go to theflophouse.simpletics.com. For a mere $10 acquire your ticket for Saturday, September 25th at 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific, not Pacific. Whoa, what was that? And we hope that we'll see you there. And oh, there'll be a little show exclusive merch that will be also available during that period. If you like having t-shirts and if you like having t-shirts that other people don't have because they weren't there, this is for you. But anyway, we hope you can make it. Time for some ads or one ad. In fact, the Plothouse is sponsored in part by Storyblocks.

Bring your story select, yes Stuart, without sacrificing your vision with Storyblocks. Storyblocks Unlimited All Access Plan gives you unlimited downloads of the over 1 million plus assets in their library. You can try out multiple options quickly and find the perfect fit, so you can create more and spend less. Stay on budget while telling the best version of your story with the most affordable subscription plans and tools

on the market that scale to meet your needs. And Restock is their commitment to increase representation in stock media by hiring creators from marginalized communities to create content that is more reflective of the diverse world we live in. I use Storyblocks to do something from our live show. It was very easy to use, very easy to find the assets, download them, they all looked beautiful. You too can explore their library and subscribe today at storyblocks.com slash flop that's storyblocks.com slash flop before we move along. Do you guys have anything? You want to plug or anything?

Well, I do own a couple of bars in Brooklyn, hinterlands bar and minis bar. I would recommend checking both of them out there. Great. Provided that in the time between recording this and releasing it, the restrictions haven't changed. And for everyone who's already been supporting and ordering T-shirts from hinterlands bar merged at gmail.com. Thank you. It's been really helpful. And many I can New York, the trade paperback is coming out soon.

It is available for, I think it's still available for pre-order. It's been really helpful. And Maniac in New York, the trade paperback is coming out soon. It is available for, I think it's still available for pre-order through Diamond. I'm not sure, but tell your local convict store to get one for you. The collection of the first series of Maniac of New York. There's an all new introduction by me in it. There's a lot of stuff in the back where Andrea, the artist, Andrea Moody, shows you how he did the art. It should look great. And of course, it's a spine-chilling tale of murder and blood and civic dysfunction. That is chilling. The most chilling of all. But now, let us move on to what? Let us move on to letters.

Letters from listeners like you, the listeners. Yep, this is from, sure. Let us move on. Let us move on to letters, letters and let, they both start the same. Just like Tracy lets the star of the game, there's Tracy lets out on the court court throwing the ball, having a ball. That's right. NBA superstar Tracy Letts and we're reading letters about him. Tracy Letts, the MVP.

Look at those rings on his meaty fists. That's right. He's the greatest that ever played Tracy Letz. He's the best in the basketball game. Augusto Sage County Tracy Letz. Maybe you don't know that when he's not writing plays. We're acting in Lady Bird. He's an NBA star. That's right. Tracy Letz number one NBA player. Tracy Letz. Well, I was just reading something who had coach coach. I have to miss the game. I'm going to be in a production of who's afraid of a genuine well Tracy normally. I'd say no, but I gotta let you go because you're just that good. We can lose you for one game, but don't make it to don't on stage. I'm Tracy Letts and I've got my dream basketball by day and Broadway by night. But is there more to this? Is there more to life than basketball and Broadway? Yes there is. Hi, I'm the movie love and basketball.

I'm here to tell you there's something else to life. It's called love and there's also basketball to hold on It's called love. And there's also basketball too. Hold on, Tracy let's then said, can I be in love and play basketball and be on Broadway? No, said love and basketball. You gotta choose to either love and basketball or love and Broadway. There's a reason there's no movie called

love and basketball and Broadway. What's Tracy let's gonna do? What's he gonna choose with this hard choice love or basketball or Broadway? He can't have it all. He can only have basketball and neither love or Broadway because that's Tracy Letz NBA superstar. Dan, what are we doing at this part of the show? I forgot. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- or whatever, peaches. Here, hearing you talk about you, me, Madness, and reading reviews of Space Jam, a new legacy, got me thinking about vanity projects. Vanity projects get a bad rap, because so many of them are clearly more about stroking the creator's egos

rather than making a compelling story. But do you have any vanity project films that you've enjoyed in the past? Does Citizen Kane count as a vanity project films that you've enjoyed in the past? Does Citizen Kane count as a vanity project? Side note, my favorite vanity project remains the comic book, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. Well, Ali didn't write it himself. That thing is so crazy and so clearly flattering to Ali

that I cannot help but smile as I read it. Keep on flopping, Jeff Lasting withheld. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, like, I see what you're saying with, I wouldn't call something like Space Jam and you like to see a vanity project is it's based around a personality. It is based around the idea that,

you know, this person has become so famous in their given area that we must put them in a movie. But, you know, like a vanity project traditionally, I think is more along the lines of something that is sort of driven by the creator. And I don't know, I mean, because I think that a vanity project, like if something is successful,

we just think of it like, oh man, that person's a writer, director, actor, like they can do it all, and it like ceases being a vanity project. Like the implied part of vanity project is, the vanity is thinking that they're good enough to do all of this and not recognizing that they aren't. But what do you have?

How is the room of vanity project and like any Woody Allen movie from his prime period, not a vanity project? You know, like it's, it's like, once, yeah, the idea that one something is of a high enough quality that it justifies a person, it justifies that they do have that talent. Does it stop being a vanity project then?

Because I want to, I was thinking along similar lines, I was talking about the documentary in Russ McCulley, or who made the Maccawey, who does like Sherman's March and stuff like that. And his documentaries are very much about his life, and about what is going on in his head. And if he was, is it the fact that he's a talented documentary in and his movies are touching and brilliant,

that makes them not vanity projects. Because otherwise, if you made a documentary literally about I'm gonna go and try to find a girlfriend in the South and meet a bunch of people that I used to know, or I'm gonna make a movie about how I'm having a kid right now and what it's like when my wife is pregnant. Like, those are, it would seem like

that's the definition of a vanity project. So what is it, is it just that vanity projects are bad versions of those? What do you guys think? Stu, Dan, are you listening to questions? Now, Steve, I like it. Yeah, like, but like, would you say something like adaptation or Sinecta Key New Yorker vanity projects

because they're like so keyed into the screenwriters like neuroses? It's a good question because at the same time. I and director, right? He directed those. Well, he directed Sinecta. He didn't direct adaptation. Spike Jones directed that.

Yeah. And like, and he doesn't star any of them, but like, it's a good question. It's like when almost, because there's also the people who will tell you true art is when the artist digs deep in themselves and says something honest about themselves and the world and how they see it. So like, that's a sort of level of vanity too. Like, is Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait, a vanity project? Probably not because he didn't seem to like himself very much.

But the like, but like at what point does someone- Hell, you don't have to like yourself too much to be vain. I mean, to be honest, you can be very vain without liking yourself. The, I think there's a, yeah, it's like when, when does it stop being art that you are looking inward and start being a vanity?

I guess maybe it's when the thing is, like Frank D'Angelo is a vanity project guy because his movies are just about how great he is as a person. It's not like this is how I see the world and I just had to get my thoughts and feelings out there. It is, I'm gonna be the greatest guy in the world and everyone's gonna tell me what a great singer I am and how tough I am and how cool I am

and I'm gonna save the day. And even when I'm a criminal vampire, I'm still somehow the hero of the movie and everybody loves me and James Conn wants me to bite him. So like that, I guess that's it's vanity when it's all about how like the moment in at the beginning of the room where they're like, Johnny, you're so wonderful. What a great boyfriend. Like that's vanity project, you know, but otherwise it's hard to tell. I mean, as we said earlier, Spike Lee literally made us, he literally, they hired him to make Nike commercials and he put himself in them playing a character

from one of his movies. Like, is that a Vanity Project? Possibly, you know, but it's also a Nike commercial. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's, the question is, do we like that we genuinely like? Because I feel like there's a lot of, I have gotten a fair amount of pleasure for a bunch of dumb vanity projects.

Yeah, that's true. Many of the ones we've already mentioned, I've enjoyed on some level. I mean, obviously my favorite vanity project is my current workout regimen because it feeds my own vanity. Ha ha favorite Vandee projects are some of the albums Prince produced. Mm-hmm.

Or the Vandee projects. Or the Carpentry works. Because Vandee! Elliott, Vandee. The art. The Vandee. No, I got it. I got it.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think my favorite Vandee project is probably the book The Devil's Candy, which is about the making of Bonfire The Vity. It's great. Okay, done. Hey, this is another letter. Oh, okay. I lost. I'll allow it. I mean, I believe it. Yeah. I lost the writer's name. Well, we'll cover it when we get to the letter section of the podcast. This is the letter. Well, okay, you're sure. You're joking in it. I lost the writer's name.

So let's just say this is from LeBron James. Thank you so much for writing it. I'm sorry, I apologize for just cut off. Hello. And we certainly, it's lost to the midst of history now. There's no way of finding the original. It was thrown in that pit when Bugs Bunny's memorabilia was buried and burned.

Look, I have, I have so little space left. I have to delete things sometimes. So, but I apologize to the writer. The writer. See, there was a browser window open that had all the information and they went up to the little X button and hit it and now it's gone forever. No, no, gone forever. Yeah. Hello, flop house. Have you ever had an incorrect first impression of a film or other media that still affects your thinking about it long after you've corrected your understanding? Stuart's Warhammer episode reminded me

of how my first exposure to 40K was a video game demo that made me think the setting was about a heroic, but hopelessly outnumbered band of alien space communists fighting the evil religious fascists of a long dead god emperor. Not knowing that those are the heroes of the game. Yeah. Several lore dives quickly taught me this wasn't a case, but whenever I play or think about the series, I wonder what it would be like if the setting really was all about, all right Stuart you say these words. Uh, all about Shasso case. Oh it's from Tau Fire Warrior. Yeah, that was a good game. A rag tag team of socialists working to free the masses of the Imperium from the Emperor and his

evil space marines. PS, I watched the castle free, I watched Castle Freak for the first time on To Be of All Things. And it was suddenly, and suddenly head of the family was at the very top of the recommended list. Yeah. Thanks, Mark. That's my legacy, baby. Yeah, Stuart molded the algorithm to his own needs,

just like Spike Lee did with that commercial. Yeah. And like Don Cheetle, Algierhythm did in the movie Space Jamming New Lakes. Yeah, you're the real life Algy Rhythm. I'm sure this is something that I don't have a fully formed answer to, but I will say two things. One is that my kids believe that Bosch plays an outsized role

in the Star Wars series because of a Bosch children's book that they have, and I think they'll always carry that with them, the idea that my younger one who is about turn three, he's like, I wanna see a video of Bosque talking, and I'm like, I don't know if that exists anywhere. Like, he's only on screen for like a second, but we have a whole book about him. So I know you think he's a magic character.

And I think they'll always think, to a certain extent, that Star Wars is about Bosque. I may have told the story on the podcast before about the movie High Spirits and how I was a kid when that came out and I had this vivid memory of another kid at school telling me, oh, I saw that movie and this is what happens in it

and telling me the most horrific, sexually violent tale I had ever heard up to that point and that I'll involve a man stabbing woman to death while they were having sex and then that woman comes back years later and starts stabbing other people And I was like and I've never seen the movie since then because I know that's not what it's about It still frames me the idea the idea of seeing that still scares me So that's what's keeping me from seeing the otherwise standard classic film high spirits

Criterion collection high spirits I'm a nice, Nigerian collection, high spirits. Um, do you have any things to, I have a, but yeah, I mean, I feel like, I feel like all my impressions are based on me, like usually dislike, and I, dislike an actor for whatever reason at the time of watching the movie, and then getting over it because I'm an adult, and I shouldn't just hold on to dumb grudges so they're unrelated, but yeah. I don't, I don't have, again, sorry that I don't think that Amy is exact, but it puts me in mind of Audrey. I discovered that she was under the impression that Mandy was a similar movie to Stuber

because, and she had based this, she had based this because she was like, I saw a picture of Nicholas Cage in a car. And I'm like, yeah, but he's covered in blood. I know what your image is. Probably drives an Uber. Yeah. Or a stupid. Yeah, but she had thought that he, yeah, it was a movie about him driving a car around.

Like, well, kind of, I guess, but very briefly. I definitely, like, when I watched the Joe Edgerton Tom Hardy movie Warrior about an ignalty, the MMA movie, I was definitely under the impression when I watched it that it was based on a true story. And it wasn't until afterwards that I was like, oh, no, it's all made up. But while I was watching them like,

this is a fantastic story. I can't believe it happened. It really is more powerful if it's based on a true story. Yeah. That's why they do it at the beginning of every episode of Fargo. Yes. It's also the fact that it's basically a serious version of here comes the boom.

That's true. You know. Well, great answers. All let's go on to recommendation. I do like those two titles are like the complete opposite ends of the spectrum of vague. You're like warrior. Any movie could be called warrior.

Yeah, here comes the boom, not that many. Yeah. Any movie with, any movie with, any movie with improper mic framing could be called here comes the boom behind the scenes crew fans okay deal with it maybe third times the charm and we can move on to

recommendations movies that I don't think so. Sorry, no recommendations yet. Anyway. Oh. I'm going to recommend a movie I watched that I came across on Hulu. I was like, oh, there's a movie called Hight Away. It's got Jeff Goldblum in it. And then I'm like, wait, this movie

is directed by the director of Lawnmower, the Lawnmower man and virtuosity. And it's got it's Jeff Goldblum and Christine Laughty and Alicia Silverstone and Jeremy Sisto in it. And it's like, what is this movie? And I started watching it, the plot being that like, no spoilers because this- Before you get into the plot, Dan, who might have written the original text that the film is based on?

Yeah, Dean Coons is based on a Dean Coons book. So I'm like, this looks like a prime slice of 90s horror thriller cheese. Did you guys have the same experience I had when you were like, you knew Stephen King was and then around 13, you saw Dean Coons novel and you're like what is this is this like this is like from an alternate universe where people don't know Stephen King exists like what's going on to this day I've not read a Dean Koon's now what what you have me any reports

on this fine I've read a bunch they're fine they're like I mean I've read a years I've specifically read the book hideaway I also read what the watchers, the one about like that. Yeah, the watchers, this is big, the dogs from the lab or whatever. Okay. It's called playing dogs, Ellen. You don't know, that's the different thing. But he's fine.

It's like, I mean, Stephen King is an author who like is often mediocre, but at his best is great. And Dean Coons is an author who's like, pretty straightforward mediocre. He's not bad, but it's not, you know, if you might as well just go read Stephen King. You know, it's not like you're going to run out of Stephen King books to read, you know. Steve Coons wanted his name taken off the movie version of hideaway. So again, like Stephen King. Make of that what you will. But I know big spoilers because it happens literally the

beginning of the movie, but Jeremy Sisto does some sort of satanic ritual to kill two thirds of his family and then kills himself and he gets sent to a great CGI afterlife that you would expect from the director of Llan Mormand in Virtuosity, a very early CGI hell meanwhile, Jeff Goldblum also dies briefly, gets sent there. Oh boy, when they get brought back from the other side, they'll get mixed up somehow. The Jeff Goldblum has all these disturbing visions. What's going on? Women keep ending up dying. What's happening? And it is just, look, it is not quite as loopy as you would hope from all of these people being involved in the movie. It does slump a lot in the middle. Alfred Malena's also in it. Always great to see him. But if you have any affection like I do for this particular brand of schlock, especially the like, cheesy,

but now like so many years have passed that they come back around to like psychedelically beautiful CGI effects. Yeah, it's a fun little movie. I saw that shit in the movie theater, Dan. I was so excited. My eyes were blown away by the special effects demo reel that they provide for you. It's amazing. There's something, I mean, it's because we grew up then, but there's something so comforting to me about night,

the way 90s movies are bad in a very specific way, you know? Mm-hmm. And I'm like, that's how you make a dumb movie. This is how you do it. Thank you, Brain Scan. I'll have another. Yeah, yeah. Screamers, yes please.

Oh, wow. I just want wanna take a moment to recognize the irony of me beginning the episode by decrying nostalgia and viewing a original space jam. You know, I'm a hypocrite like everyone. But we're not like normal guys, like we're like cool guys.

Like we understand that our nostalgia is toxic and that we can stop anytime we want. We like crap for the right reasons, not for the wrong reasons. We're cool guys, like we understand that our nostalgia is toxic and that we can stop anytime we want. We like crap for the right reasons. Not for the wrong reasons. Yeah, we're cool guys. As long as it's done well. Yeah, come on. Anyway, cool, cool.

I am going to recommend, I'm gonna shift gears here a little bit. Shift, I'm gonna recommend a beautiful, amazing movie that was nominated for an Academy Award. So it does not need my support, but you should listen to me anyway. I'm gonna recommend a movie called Wolf Walkers that's on Apple Plus. It was nominated for what best animated film,

I think it lost a soul, which is also great. But Wolf Walkers is a beautiful historic fantasy about, well, it's about, you know, like a frontier town in Ireland, and they are dealing with a wolf problem in the woods, and a, the, it's a little girl who wants to hunt the wolves and help her father who's a hunter, who's voiced by Sean Bean. But then they realize that the, that there's more to these wolves than meets the eye, they are not transformers. Well, they kind of are actually.

But it's, it's beautiful, the animation style But then they realize that the, that there's more to these wolves than meets the eye. They are not transformers. Well, they kind of are actually. But it's, it's beautiful. The animation style is, it feels very unique and fresh. It's great. It's, yeah, it's lovely. It's great. I highly recommend it.

I feel like it's appropriate to show most kids. It's a little scary. And there's some violence, but it's, man, it's just such a gorgeous little movie. How did it? And what happens in the big basketball game at the end? That's the thing. So the big basketball game involves LeBron James again. Okay. And Marvin the Martian shows up this time finally getting his due. And that dog of his who also wears the same clothes as he has.

What's his name? Or her name I don't know. I should know that and I don't remember it. Let me look it up. It's just as a Pluto is taken for a dog. I know. 100% true. So they show up.

Okay, nine. He's just called K nine. So it's kind of boring. Disappointing. It goes start with Jim Belushi in that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the spoil too much, but yeah, it's a pretty good basketball game. Okay, I'll have to see that basketball movie, Wolf Walkers.

I'm going to recommend a documentary that I also saw in Hulu, just like Dan watches movies on Hulu too. And this is the movie Summer of Soul that came out just recently. And it is mostly made up of footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. And it was a big multi-week, you know, multi-weekend festival where a ton of amazing performers performed in 1969. And then the movie, you know, it uses that as a way to talk about what that moment meant for being Black in America at the time

and both the changes that the black community was going through and the both hopes and fears at the time. And they make a little bit of hay about, this was this big festival and it has happening around the same time as Woodstock and did not get at the same time as Woodstock and did not get the same attention and what that means, but they don't make that

the whole linchpin of the movie, which is great. Instead, they really let the footage speak for itself for the most part. And the footage is amazing. The performances are amazing, the performances are sounding, and they did a great job. Probably restoring this older footage, it looks great. And it was all like just sitting in a basement somewhere,

right, in Questlove. That's the story, yeah. Well, some of it had some of it had been leaked onto the internet before apparently. So well, it's not all totally discovered, but a lot of it is. And it's just really fantastic. And even if you watch it just as a concert movie, it's well worth it. But it works really well as kind of like a snapshot of the time type thing and talking to some of the people who were there and stuff like that. So I really enjoyed a lot. And as people who follow me on Twitter may have seen that, the thing that struck me the most in some ways

was how many people in our wedding some brairos that apparently in 1969, some brairos and kind of fringed cowboy jackets were briefly very popular. And so watch it and feel like you are looking at a world that does not exist anymore and cannot exist again, this strange analog world of sombreros and fringe jackets and like huge boxy TV cameras and stuff.

So, summer of soul, it's available, I think it's in theaters too. So, why not go watch it in a theater if you feel safe doing that and give money to the producers? But I liked it a lot. producers, but I like to lot. Well, that was quite a journey. A new legacy. Yep, we started a new legacy today. Before we go, I'd like to think, thank, I'd like to think. I'd like to thank that I'm thankful for our producer,

Alex Smith, who makes us sound great. I'd like to recommend that you go over to maxamfund.org, our podcast network, maxfun, carries a lot of great shows. If you like podcasts, I'm sure you'll find at least one other thing. If you're not several, you will enjoy by checking them out. If you haven't recommended the flop house to someone who you think might like it, why not give it a try? We always appreciate when you guys help us grow, but for the flop house, I've been Dan McCoy.

I've been Stewart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kaelin in the part of Tracy Letts MVP Superstar of the NBA. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, talking about Derspace Jam, I'm legacy Noia. Oh, wow. Now, I want to see, like, a print for, like, a breast play, but for a space jam. I mean, this movie has so much distancing in it,

so there's so many distancing effects in the audience, it's just kind of like a red play. And, but, you know what, there is a... I assume there's a German version where they swap out LeBron James from a Herzog. And he's like, oh, I must get my son back, but bugs, bugs, how have you been since basketball? Okay.

You know, anyway, let's start the episode. I don't want to waste this stuff. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artists owned, audience supported. work, comedy and culture. Artists-owned, audience supported.