Critical reviews of last Friday’s “Space Jam: A New Legacy” have not been kind, the movie garnered a dismal 31% (4.8/10) on Rotten Tomatoes even as the public seems more taken with it – giving it an 81% audience score.
While the film has been labelled many things, filmmaker Joe Pytka has called it something else: “not Space Jam”. Pytka would know too, he directed the original “Space Jam” movie back in 1996 and has long held the stance that a sequel was not needed.
This week he finally saw it and, speaking with TMZ, he offered his reaction which is fairly blunt:
“I’ve worked with three people that have this magical quality that they affect people no matter what; they see them and some light goes on: Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. All three have this quality where people connect immediately without understanding anything about them. And nobody else has that quality.
LeBron is a fantastic basketball player, he’s a top-20 basketball player of all time. He is not Michael. Maybe they should call it something else. They should not call it Space Jam 2, or whatever. It should be another movie. It’s not Space Jam. Space Jam is Michael Jordan. No matter how much LeBron wants to be a great player – and he is a great player – he’s not Michael Jordan. There will never be another Michael Jordan.
Pytka also shared that it took him five separate sittings to finish the new “Space Jam” and dubbed the reboot’s soundtrack as “insignificant”. He also took direct aim at the way Bugs Bunny is treated in the film, calling it “heartbreaking”.
Still, Pytka says he’s not mad about the new film, he “just thinks it sucks” says the outlet. The original “Space Jam” itself isn’t that far off the reception for the new one, holding a 44% (5.4/10) on Rotten Tomatoes.
