As the saying goes — and feel free to insert your debauchery of choice — one milkshake is delicious. Two, three, perhaps even four, are taste bud nirvana.
But 762 milkshakes become … well … stale. Tedious. Sensory overload.
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| As a crowd of thousands watches and worries, LeBron James and a digitally upgraded Bugs Bunny wonder what unpleasant trick their revolting opponents will uncork next. |
Which is a shame, because — at its core — this film offers a sweet story about the need for fathers and sons to relate to each other.
Alas, no fewer than six credited writers — and, I’ve no doubt, many more uncredited hands — turned the result into the world’s most frantic pinball machine. Actually, “frantic” isn’t strong enough. Frenzied. Berserk. Freaked out. Zonkers.
Out of control.
Definitely out of director Malcolm D. Lee’s control.
Lee is best known for overblown, slapstick-laden farces such as Undercover Brother, Girls Trip and Night School, often with stand-up comics in lead roles. He doesn’t know from subtle, pacing, or restraint. He definitely graduated from the school of Throw Everything On The Wall And See What Sticks.
And boy, he found a lot to throw on this wall.
LeBron James, playing himself, has become a basketball taskmaster with sons Darius (Ceyair J Wright) and Dom (Cedric Joe). The elder Darius is cheerfully eager to follow in his father’s size 16 footsteps, but young Dom has his head in an entirely different game. His passion is coding and IT development; he even has built his own way-cool computer game.
Dad is oblivious, much to the chagrin of wife Kamiyah (Sonequa Martin-Green). Basketball is everything; anything else is a distraction.
Elsewhere, within the massive server bank at Warner Bros. Studios, an egomaniacal digi-villain dubbed Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle) has been up to no good. Hoping to win real-world adulation, Al has developed cutting-edge tech that could digitally incorporate LeBron into an endless array of media projects.
LeBron declines, during a presentation meeting with execs played by Sarah Silverman and Steven Yeun. Actually, LeBron calls the proposal monumentally stupid, which enrages Al — monitoring via Wifi-linked devices — into monumental revenge.
In the blink of an eye, LeBron and Dom are sucked into Al’s digital realm, where he seduces the impressionable lad with the thrill of being able to fabricate anything — instantly — while employing crocodile psychology to widen the rift between father and son.
