Space Jam is a 1996 American live-action/animated sports comedy film starring basketball player Michael Jordan and featuring the Looney Tunes cartoon characters. The film was produced by Joe Medjuck, Daniel Goldberg, and Ivan Reitman, and directed by Joe Pytka. Nigel Miguel was a basketball technical advisor. It is based on a series of advertisements for Air Jordan, which featured Jordan and Bugs playing basketball. Wayne Knight, Theresa Randle, and Bill Murray appear in supporting roles, while Billy West, Dee Bradley Baker, and Danny DeVito headline the voice cast. Space Jam was the first feature film to be produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation, and was released theatrically in the United States on November 15, 1996, by Warner Bros under their Family Entertainment unit.
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Space Jam presents an alternate history of what happened between Jordan's initial retirement from the NBA in 1993 and his comeback in 1995, in which he is enlisted by Bugs Bunny and his friends to help them win a basketball match against a group of aliens who want to enslave them for their amusement park.
A fully animated crossover sequel with the television series Teen Titans Go!, titled Teen Titans Go! See Space Jam, which was aired on Cartoon Network on June 20, 2021, while a standalone sequel, titled Space Jam: A New Legacy, starring LeBron James, was released on July 16, 2021.
Plot
Swackhammer (Danny DeVito), an evil alien theme park owner, needs a new attraction at Moron Mountain. When his gang, the Nerdlucks, heads to Earth to kidnap Bugs Bunny (Billy West) and the Looney Tunes, Bugs challenges them to a basketball game to determine their fate. The aliens agree, but they steal the powers of NBA basketball players, including Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley -- so Bugs gets some help from superstar Michael Jordan.
Why It's Looney and a JAM Indeed!
- The idea of a Looney Tunes film about the Looney Tunes characters meeting a real-life basketball player (Micheal Jordan) going on a basketball game, and going on a jam as the Tunes face a legitimate threat against them all #together is a pretty original and good idea for a Looney Tunes movie, and it was very nicely executed in this movie.
- The movie has a nice sense of humor.
- The animation is very detailed and smooth for both Looney Tunes and new characters that rival Who Framed Roger Rabbit, plus the fact of combining well the CGI elements like the effects and backgrounds with the 2D characters. Some can argue that the traditional animation looks better here than in this successor.
- The title "Space Jam" is a brilliant title for the Looney Tunes movie, and it fits the Looney Tunes universe pretty well.
- The basketball sequences are incredibly well-made and choreographed, making the entire basketball stadium all in green-screen to fit.
- The 1997 CGI-animated Kids' WB! bumper shows the inspiration for the movie.
- Likable and entertaining characters such as Michael Jordan himself (Even though his acting isn't too good, see BQ#1) and the entire cast of Looney Tunes characters.
- The very cute, sexy, and tomboyishly beautiful Lola Bunny is a decent addition to the cast. She would appear in other media including The Looney Tunes Show and New Looney Tunes.
- Catchy music soundtrack, most notably the Space Jam theme, as it spawned an internet meme where it was mashed up with other music.
- Come on and slam, and welcome to the Jam!
- The song "I Believe I Can Fly" in the prologue is a very phenomenally fantastic song.
- 2-Unlimited's "Get Ready For This" appears here as well.
- James Newton Howard's score is also great as well ever again.
- A great guest appearance by Bill Murray (who portrayed Peter Venkman in the Ghostbusters franchise) that later became another internet meme.
- The director, Joe Pytka, did a good job directing this movie.
- It was the first-ever full-length Looney Tunes movie that wasn't a collection of shorts stitched together.
- Decent acting for live-action characters (except for Michael Jordan) and voice acting for animated characters (for the most part).
- It was faithful to the Looney Tunes franchise and the Air Jordan commercials with Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan that promoted the movie.
- There is a nice Easter Egg cameo of Bosko, one of the original Looney Tunes characters with an inside joke referencing Leon Schlesinger.
- The Monstars are awesome and memorable villains.
- The post-end credits scene where Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and the Nerdlucks all try to do the traditional Looney Tunes "That's All Folks" is really funny!
Bad Qualities
- Since the late Mel Blanc's death, many of the Looney Tunes barely sound the same, even though the voice acting was excellent such as Bob Bergen as Porky Pig and Billy West as Elmer Fudd.
- In particular, Billy West's voice impression of Bugs Bunny (while decent) isn't as great as Mel Blanc's or (to a lesser-known extent) Jeff Bergman's or Joe Alaskey's impressions.
- Speaking of acting, Michael Jordan's acting is not that good (unsurprising since this was one of his first acting roles). Foreign dubs salvage his performance, though.
- There are way too many close-up shots.
- While Lola Bunny is an excellent character with formidable talents for basketball and is voiced by a great cartoon voice actress that gives her a strong personality, she doesn’t have that much of a character fully built up, making her kind of stand out as just a one-dimensional love interest for Bugs Bunny. Future projects would try to give Lola a personality upgrade, notably The Looney Tunes Show, which portrays her as eccentric and dense, and New Looney Tunes, which portrays her as being a clever trickster yet very bubbly and spontaneous.
- Not to mention, she was the only character that was flanderized in Space Jam: A New Legacy.
- Some of the Looney Tunes characters didn't get any barely screentime, especially Speedy Gonzalez, Wile E Coyote, Road Runner, Sniffles, and Barnyard Dog. Especially on the scene when most of them get hardly injured after being beaten up by the Monstars, which was offscreen on some of them.
- Road Runner was shown injured in the scene even though he was among the fastest members on the team (along with Speedy) which was never explained how he got beaten up by the Monstars in the first place.
- The CGI, despite being well animated and mostly immersive, aged very poorly.
- There are a couple of plot holes.
- The film hasn’t aged well over the years, thanks to a lot of the dialogue seeming very cheesy nowadays. Not helping that its reputation was ruined by Space Jam: A New Legacy.
- There is some product placement in the movie, though it's thankfully not as bad as the product placement in this successor.
Reception
Space Jam received mixed reviews from film critics, who were divided on the out-of-place merits and concept of combining Jordan and his profession with the Looney Tunes characters, while many additionally praised the technical achievement of blending digitally live-action and animation (particularly the basketball scenes) and the faithful Looney Tunes comedy. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes holds the film a score of 44% based on 85 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "While it's no slam dunk, Space Jam's silly, Looney Toons-laden slapstick and vivid animation will leave younger viewers satisfied – though accompanying adults may be more annoyed than entertained.". Metacritic scores a film 59/100 "mix or average reviews." Roger Ebert gave Space Jam a "thumbs up," which his partner, Gene Siskel, also gave the film, although his zeal was more subdued. Todd McCarthy of Variety praised the film for its humor. He also praised the Looney Tunes' antics and Michael's acting. Although Janet Maslin of The New York Times criticized the film's animation, she later went on to say that the film is a "fond tribute to the Looney Tunes characters' past." Nostalgia Critic (Doug Walker) gave the movie a negative review due to his hatred of the film, as mentioned in a review he made during his early years on YouTube as a fan of the Looney Tunes cartoons himself.
Many critics compared it unfavorably to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? a popular film in which cartoon characters and live-action humans coexisted in the same movie as well. Basketball fans thought the movie to be demeaning to the sport, and Michael Jordan himself. Those who liked the film praised the visual effects, which were groundbreaking at the time. Roger Ebert was among the few significant critics to give Space Jam an enthusiastic "thumbs up." Some of his readers theorized that Ebert did so because he works in Chicago, and therefore would be supportive of any of Michael Jordan's endeavors. Leonard Maltin also gave the film a positive review.
Despite the mixed press, the film served as a high point for musical artist R. Kelly, whose song "I Believe I Can Fly" became a hit after it was featured on the film's soundtrack. Other notable musical numbers appearing in the movie include a cover of "Fly Like an Eagle" by Seal, "Hit 'em High (Monstars' Anthem)" by B-Real, Coolio, Method Man, LL Cool J, and Busta Rhymes, and "For You I Will" by Monica. It also became a cult classic years after the movie was released over the years in 1996.
Space Jam was a box office success. At the end of its run, it grossed $90,418,342 in the United States and over $230,000,000 internationally. It became the highest-grossing basketball film of all time as well as the tenth-highest-grossing film of 1996.
Videos
Trailers
Reviews
Trivia
- This film was one of the first to have a tie-in website. This website is still active today and it hasn't been updated since then. Following the release of Space Jam: A New Legacy's first trailer in April 2021, the website was updated for promotion of the new film, though the 1996 content remained available as a separate landing page.
- A clever small detail: During the basketball game, Marvin the Martian is seen as the referee because he is both a toon AND an alien and is, therefore, the "most impartial.
- It was stated in 1998 that Chuck Jones hated this movie and was very critical of it.
- In one of Jones' later interviews, he stated that, in his opinion, "Lola Bunny is a character with no future, she's a worthless character with no personality," and that he didn't "like the idea or comedy of Space Jam at all.", and didn’t like the use of toilet humor, pointing to Porky’s line “I think I wet myself” as an example. His opinion was shared by Maurice Noble, an artist who created visual backgrounds for many animated shorts by Jones’ unit.
- Once, in a studio dinner held in his honor, Jones went into a heavy rant about the movie, forcing the executives to escort Jones off the lot.
- Due to the popularity of Space Jam, fans wanted a sequel with LeBron James. It was finally announced in early development by Warner Bros. Pictures in September 2018 with Malcolm D. Lee as director, Ryan Coogler as producer (known for directing Creed and Black Panther) and James as the protagonist. It was released on July 16, 2021, and received generally negative reviews.
- Spike Lee was interested in helping Pytka with the screenplay, but Warner Bros. blocked him from the project out of dissatisfaction with how he funded Malcolm X (1992).
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