Wizard-8

I admit that I enjoyed the original "Space Jam" movie when it came out in its day, but I also have to admit that during the subsequent 25+ years that have passed since then, my viewpoint of it has diminshed substantially; I now see that it greatly betrayed its classic characters and had them act in a way contrary to their classic images.

However, I will give the original SJ this: It is a MUCH better movie than this "Did anyone want this?" follow-up. Where to begin? Well, here's a list of some things about this follow-up that rubbed me the wrong way:

• The toon characters are written in an extremely shallow manner - they hardly show any personality or depth. Any one of their classic seven minute cartoons showed more of them than this almost two hour movie

• They cut out Pepe LePew from the movie for politically correct reasons, even though anyone with half a brain will see that LePew is such a broad character that's it's hard to take him and his viewpoint seriously.

• The voice artists for the toon characters are extremely amateurish. Now I know that voice artist Mel Blanc is long dead, but you would think that by now, Warner Brothers would have found some adequate replacements.

• There is no warmth in the narrative or the characters. Yes, this is supposed to be a wild raucous comedy, but you have to still have heart so the audience will care about the characters and what they are going through.

• The relentless bombardment of plugs for various Warner Brothers IP properties is so extreme that it goes beyond embarrassing and becomes shameless.

• The movie feels both too slow (such as with setting up the whole basketball challenge) and too fast (lack of character development, lack of explaining how things are in a certain situation, etc.)

• The decision to turn the classic Looney Tunes characters into CGI creatations for much of the movie, instead of their classic hand drawn style.

I could go on, but those above points are the biggest beefs I had with this travesty. Is there anything GOOD to say about this fiasco? Well, I will admit that the movie is more technically accomplished than the first movie. There are a few small gags here and there that did make me chuckle a little. Also, the live action cast does work hard despite the shabby script given to them (even LeBron James puts in a great effort, and manages to be adequate.) It's hard to believe this movie took SIX writers to put together, but it's easy to believe that this is a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

By now, you would think that the prolific B movie producing team of. Randall Emmett and George Furla would have managed to improve SOME of their skills producing direct to DVD efforts, but "Hard Kill" doesn't prove to be an improvement over most of their other movies.

With their frequent movie actor Bruce Willis, you probably know what to expect. For starters, this is yet another Willis/Emmett/Furla exercise where the extremely and notoriously lazy Willis just lent his acting services for a couple of days for a few million dollars, meaning that he doesn't appear all that much. Actually, I can't say Willis lends his "acting services" because he doesn't make ANY effort to act at all. He sits down for most of his limited scenes, and when he talks he seems to come across as heavily medicated.

In fairness to Willis, none of the other actors in the cast come across as even remotely competent in their performances, though the somnambulist performances by all may come from the fact that the dialogue is downright terrible, full of cliched statements and awkward utterances. The rest of the screenplay is bad as well, setting 90% of the movie in one particular abandoned factory, and with plot turns you'll see coming a mile away.

So why am I not giving this movie just one star out of ten? Well, director Matt Eskandari does occasionally rise slightly above the limited budget, bad script, and confined location. The movie is well lit and photographed, and he manages to throw in a few somewhat interesting camera movements and angles. Had he managed to make the action sequences good, and the pacing exciting and suspenseful, there MIGHT have been a chance the end product could have been passable. However, Eskandari can't rise enough to make the action and atmosphere sparkle.

In other words, if you are even just slightly familiar with Willis/Emmett/Furla collaborations, you will know exactly how this particular effort will come off even before you start watching it.