Review: Space Jam (1996) · 4:27am May 1st, 2016
Space Jam, is, in all honesty, a film that could have only ever been made in the mid-90s. Like, it's actually really difficult to put into words. In a way, it feels as if it's the entire first half of the ninetes got distilled into a single film.
You have insufferably catchy songs that will never, ever leave your head, you have utterly shameless product placement and merchandise shilling, you have kitschy, forced humor, and, above all, you have the Looney Tunes enlisting Michael Jordan to play basketball to save them from enslaving aliens. It is literally beyond comprehension how utterly...baffling this film is.
Like, the acting...all of it...sucks????? Michael Jordan can't act. At all. He spends the entire film looking like he's mildly bemused and/or disappointed that his favorite brand of ice cream wasn't on sale. Or that he thought baseball was a viable alternate career option. Wayne Knight, of Sienfeld fame is also here, and he spends most of the movie being your stereotypical Michael Jordan obsessed looser, who contributes nothing to the plot in any way shape or form.
The Looney Tunes themselves feel less like the looney Tunes, and more the MADTv parody versions of themselves. For one thing, try they might, Billy West and Dee Bradley Baker are a far cry from Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, both of whom seem watered down and stripped of the very things that made them the legendarily beloved characters that they are. This is further compounded by both of them being unable to properly mimic Blanc's voices for the two. West's Bugs Bunny is at least an octave too deep, and Baker's Daffy Duck is almost an octave too high, with, ironically, far too much of a lisp.
The rest of the Looney Tunes just sort of exist. Oh yeah, and Lola was there. She did...jack squat. Like, come on, the internet lead me to believe she was the biggest sex bomb this side of Jessica Rabbit, but in reality, Lola shows up, insists not to be called "doll", and possibly the most blantant example of plot armor I have ever seen. Her quasi-sex vixen personality clashes with the far more zany Looney Tunes, yet she lacks any real charisma and/or personality beyond "I Am a Sexy Lady Bunny Who is Totally Perfect at Any Sport and Will Never Ever Be Subject to Slapstick Although I'm a Looney Tune™". At least The Looney Tunes Show exists, and I can get a much funnier Lola there (seriously, watch The Looney Tunes Show).
Anyways, moving on...
Danny de Vito is here. I don't think he's acting. I'm pretty sure they just found him on the way back from the local pub or whatever, and had him randomly yammer into a microphone for about an hour, and then animate a random character to the dialogue.
Bill Murray is here (Between Groundhog Day and Rushmore...so...tough times I guess). He is Bill Murray. That is all you need to know. But he does get the best line of dialogue in the entire movie. Seriously, he is LITERALLY the only reason to watch this movie. I'm pretty sure he wasn't acting either. I'm pretty wandered onto the set, and just started playing along because he was bored.
Also, can I say the animation sucks? 'cause it does. A lot. All the animated characters (you, 70% of the cast), moves in a weird, quasi-rotoscoped manner, and the over-compensating shading means that they feel weirdly trapped between 2D and 3D, and don't blend into the live action backgrounds at all. On top of that, the camera LOVES to get really up close and personal with the increasingly bizarre and disturbing facial expressions, that look almost like the characters stuck their fingers in an electrical socket.
The soundtrack is utterly untouchable though. I swear, whenever one of the awesomely catchy songs started playing, it's like the film ascended to a higher level of existence, before being dragged back down to earth by the sheer awfulness of the rest of the film.
And really, that's all I can say about this film.
Space Jam IS. It is a singular....thing that must be seen to be believed.
1 star, only because of Bill Murray. I'm off to download the soundtrack now.
I remember hearing somewhere that Marvin the Martian was the referee for the basketball game because he was both a Looney Toon and an alien, so he would be impartial. I think that was nice.
But anyway, yeah. Space Jam is one of the ninetiesy movie to ever nineties.
Don't forget the subplot of the other basketball players.
I completely agree with you that it's a terrible movie, but I still love it. It's my guilty pleasure movie... Well one of them. Thankskilling was hilarious.
Fucking review Ultimate Spider-Man!
3912592 no
You are not going to believe this,
3916794 I knew about this two days ago
3916804 Oh
3917081 nah its okay, i hadn't made a blog post yet
3917082
“Looney Tunes: Back in Action” is definitely better than this hunk of junk, particularly because it’s a Looney Tunes film that actually manages to be a Looney Tunes film.