Arkansas Online

‘Jam’ good way to get out of heat

PHILIP MARTIN

We were in Washington earlier this week and had a few hours to kill on an afternoon with temperatures climbing into the 90s. So we bought tickets and watched “Space Jam: A New Legacy” at the Regal Gallery Place multi-plex a few blocks north of the National Mall.

Why “Space Jam”? Well, one does need to keep up, and it is the No. 1 movie in the U.S. this week. And it was playing on multiple screens, so there were shows starting just about every hour. And it was less than two hours long — the official runtime is 1 hour, 55 minutes but you can shave a few minutes off if you don’t stay for the credits (and in these days of IMDb there’s no real need to sit through the credits unless you suspect that a post-credits sequence will tease some development in the whatever cinematic universe). And it was cool.

Actually, there was a bit more to it than that; that morning Karen had suggested that we might need to find someplace to hide out in the hottest part of the afternoon, and suggested a movie. Gallery Place was most convenient, considering where we’d be, and she read the list of possibilities.

“‘Pig,’” I suggested. “You really need to see ‘Pig.’”

(I felt guilty that I had watched “Pig” all by my lonesome on my iPad. Had I suspected it was actually good I would have saved it for evening viewing and Karen would have seen it. But, like I said in my review, I thought “Pig” was going to be something other than what it turned out to be.)

“But you’ve seen ‘Pig,’” she said.

“I don’t mind watching it again,” I said. “And you do need to see it. It’s a really cute pig too.”

“I don’t want to see anything bad happen to the pig,” she said.

“Don’t worry, nobody wants to hurt the pig,” I said. “The pig is worth a lot of money. And the violence in ‘Pig’ is mostly Nic Cage revealing soul-shattering truths to people.”

“Hmm,” she said.

So “Pig” was a possibility. But we missed its start time. And another “Space Jam” showing was convenient.

“You saw the original, right?” she said.

“Probably.” If not, I had seen clips. I knew about the Michael Jordan “Space Jam.” More than that, I had read quite a few reviews of the current “Space Jam,” which Warner Bros. screened too late for our deadlines last week. Most of them were not kind. But we weren’t looking to be engaged on any deep level — we wanted to sit in the air conditioning while

light and noise colluded. Obviously “Space Jam” wasn’t the sort of movie that we’d seek out to edify ourselves; it was a movie for kids (but was it, really?) and an opportunity for Warner Bros. to exploit their repository of characters while easing LeBron James into a legitimate leading role in a major motion picture.

CORPORATE SYNERGY

On one level, “Space Jam: A New Legacy” is a cynical, maybe even lazy, exercise in corporate synergy.

But I like LeBron James. I think he’s a charming fellow and I wish him well.

Did I tell you I met him once? Or at least we stood next to each other in an elevator in the Four Seasons in Toronto during the film festival a couple of light years ago. He’s taller than

I am. I made him laugh by deadpanning “S’up, King?” while looking straight ahead and not making eye contact with him. This probably makes me his favorite movie critic. We’re so close I probably should recuse myself from reviewing this and future LeBron James movies, but I won’t do that because my greater duty is to you, my loyal readers, who really care what I think about “Space Jam: A New Legacy.”

Which is that it’s a movie starring LeBron James and Don Cheadle and a bunch of pixels. Which is, it’s all right, what do you want me to say? Which is it was probably more fun to make than it is to watch, though my limited experience leads me to believe that almost no movie is really all that much fun to make. Making a movie is about standing around and waiting for the cameras to be set up. Or for the aforementioned pixels to render.

Like someone once said, I’d rather drive a truck.

But understand, there is nothing so terrible about going to the movies on a hot afternoon — an issue I had watching the 21st-century iteration of Bugs Bunny (who, alas, has been dumbed down considerably from the character I remember from my childhood) interact with a guy whose best nickname remains “The Akron Hammer.”

UNDERSEXUALIZED RABBIT?

“The big issue about this movie is how they’ve toned down the hypersexualization of the Lola Rabbit character,” I mansplained.

This is supposedly true; Evidently, Twitter machines everywhere blew up because this Lola Rabbit isn’t as “hot” as the version that appeared in the 1996 Jordan film. (Which, according to Wikipedia, was “semi-biographical”? What?!) Apparently fan boys see this as depriving them of their right to get worked up over a cartoon rabbit. Eww.

On the other hand, plenty of men from my generation can recall having not unpleasant feelings of confusion and dislocation whenever Bugs put on a dress.

Anyway, “Space Jam: A New Legacy” is the biggest movie in the country right now, and I’ve seen it. And even if it’s not Masculin feminin,” you could make a case that it’s aimed squarely at the hearts of what Jean Luc-Godard called “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” We laughed a little. We groaned a little. We saw completely around all sides of the movie and marvelled at the product placement and wondered who sneaked Jeanne des Anges, the notorious Ursuline nun who, in 1633, claimed she (and others) had been bewitched by the priest Urbain Grandier, who got burned at the stake for his trouble.

Vanessa Redgrave played her in the completely mad and deeply frightening 1971 Ken Russell film “The Devils,” which is one of the most disturbing films ever made. While it is very much Warner Bros.’ intellectual property, they’ve never put it out on DVD.

You could not say it was boring. (Well, maybe the game itself was, a little.)

But it was over soon enough and we were back out in the sunshine.

“Hey, Cal Ripkin,” a homeless guy called at me. (I don’t really think he thought I was Cal Ripkin, but he could have.)

“Hi, haters,” James tweeted when the box office reports came in.

S’up, King. We see you.

★★★

Housekeeping note: The studios have messed with us again this week, scheduling two screenings for major motion pictures (the latest M. Night Shyamalan jam “Old” and the G.I. Joe origin story “Snake Eyes”). We’re planning on reviewing those films next week.

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2021-07-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

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