THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
The animated characters of the Looney Tune franchise have been a staple of pop culture since debuting in the 1930s and have remained popular ever since. In the pre 90s, children would ask if these icons would ever be in a movie. In 1996, that dream became a reality in the biggest way possible.
PLOT
Space Jam shows an extraterrestrial planet named ‘Moron Mountain’. Swackhammer runs a theme park and is losing customers who are now becoming bored of the attractions. His minions known as the Nerdlucks make a pitch that they should recruit the Looney Tunes from Earth to be the new attractions. The boss agrees and encourages to abduct if they decline. The Nerdlucks make their way to Earth and they find Tune Land, an underground location where all the Tunes live. They attempt to take them all, but Bugs Bunny tricks them to give them a chance to defend themselves. Because of how short the Nerdlucks are, the Tunes challenge them to a basketball game. However, they outsmart them by stealing the talent from popular basketball players: The orange leader Pound steals from Charles Barkley, the green second in command Bang steals from Patrick Ewing, the purple one named Bupkus gets talent from Larry Johnson, the gullible blue Blanko snatches Shawn Bradley’s talent and the red one named Nawt steals talent from Muggsy Bogues. When the said stars lose their talent, the public mistake this as a plague, resulting in the rest of the sports season to be cancelled until it’s resolved. When the Nerdlucks reveal their stolen talent to the Tunes, they become monstrous superstars or as Sylvester dubs them ‘Monstars’. Knowing that the odds aren’t in their favor, Bugs recruits a professional basketball player, Michael Jordan. He explains the ordeal to him, but the star doesn’t believe he can help because he retired from basketball to play baseball. When he encounters the Monstars firsthand, he stands his guard and chooses to help the Tunes. They seem to have some kind of upper hand because aside from Michael and Bugs, they have more than enough teammates to play against the opposing team of five: Daffy Duck, Tasmanian Devil, Speedy González, Sylvester, Tweety Bird, Pepe LePew, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Road Runner, Wile E Coyote and Barnyard Dawg. Granny and Witch Hazel are assigned as cheerleaders, while Marvin the Martian is the referee. The only Tune in the team that knows how to play basketball is a female bunny named Lola, who Bugs quickly gets a crush on. He and Daffy go retrieve MJ’s gear at his home on his behalf. Despite having an altercation with the house dog Charlie, his children lend it to them. As they return to Tune Land, they get followed by Jordan’s publicist Stan who hasn’t seen him since Bugs pulled him from a golf game. He stays to show support to the new team dubbed the ‘Tune Squad’. After days of practice, the day of the game has arrived. Tune Squad gets outmatched by the Monstars in the first half of the game. During halftime, Stan discovers how their opponents remain skilled and warns MJ. Michael & Bugs bring encouragement to their team by splitting water, labeling it to be special. With their newfound motivation, they catch up during the third quarter. Swackhammer in attendance is displeased that the victory might not be his for the taking. He summons a timeout before the final quarter, resulting in Michael to raise the stakes: If Tune Squad wins, the Monstars must return the talent they stole. But if they lose, the Tunes will be spared in exchange for Michael. The Monstars do their best to eliminate the competition by injuring almost every teammate. The only ones standing are Michael, Bugs, Lola and Daffy but they need one more non injured player to have an even game. Lucky for the Tune Squad, Michael’s golfing buddy, actor Bill Murray arrives to help, claiming that a producer dropped him off. The Tune Squad ends up winning when Michael extends his arm significantly, which only works because the laws of physics work differently in Tune Land. Before returning the talent, the Monstars stand up to Swackhammer by strapping him to a rocket that sends him back to Moron Mountain. All Nerdlucks choose to stay in Tune Land. After this basketball game, Michael goes home to perform a baseball game. And after that game, he returns the talent to the stars. The film ends with him returning to basketball in 1995 as a member of the Chicago Bulls.
THOUGHTS
This is one of many films I’ve been seeing since I was a child. And as years progressed, I still find some kind of satisfaction here. I truly believe that director Joe Pytka and producer Ivan Reitman succeeded in creating a fun time for everyone with this hybrid film. The idea of theses cartoons to play a sport with a household name of it is a cool idea that pays off. Like any sports movie, it does provide a fair amount of motivation to viewers. Michael Jordan is not the person you would consider an actor, but he does make it work blending in with animated crowd. With him, we feel the message to find something that drives you to succeed and you’ll never forget where you belong once you find it. In his perspective, he loved doing baseball but it was basketball where he truly belonged. And as the movie portrays, playing with the Tunes was a wake up call that helped him give the sport another run that was worth it in the long run. The other five basketball stars aren’t there much, but their arc spoke volumes. They were incomplete without their talent, which created another message that stuck with me: While there is more to life than your passion but without the thing that makes you feel such, life could lose meaning. While that may sound depressing, there is a big sigh of relief that there talents return. Going into the rest of the cast, Wayne Knight was hilarious as Stan. Similar to his sitcom roles, you can’t get enough of how clumsy and dim witted he unintentionally acts. Even when you see that, you can’t help but think he fits in with the Tunes. I love Bill Murray a whole lot, so his enthusiasm of wanting to play basketball gets me to laugh so easily. The fact of how random he appears to aid MJ in the climax is hilarious because of how random it is. Going into the animated characters, each Looney Tune makes their mark and gets at least one laugh at me. The biggest laugh for me was how Elmer and Sam dress up as Jules & Vincent from Pulp Fiction to attack Bupkus. It is a priceless moment for me because it suits the characters. As for the new characters, Lola easily makes a good impression because while she doesn’t make us laugh here, she shows to never judge a book by the cover. Bugs doubted her because she is a female and after she showed off her skills, it shows that no one’s values should ever be underestimated. It is easy to hate Swackhammer because actor does a great job embodying the villain’s wickedness from the voice alone. Every time he spoke, you just knew he’s not pleasant to be near. He always intimidated people because he was the tallest from where he came. So it’s easy to say he meets his comeuppance in the hands of those he oppressed. Speaking of which, the Nerdluck/Monstar dynamic are arguably the most interesting part of this movie. While the Nerdlucks are easy to stop on, the Monstars are a forced to be reckoned with. Their transformation sequence is arguably the one scene from the movie which the visuals aged well, where some scenes admittedly haven’t. If there is anything we learn from them is that you must never let negative influences control your life, hence standing up to Swackhammer. Just because I enjoyed this movie does not mean it’s perfect, because there many flaws I saw throughout. First off, I can’t be the only one annoyed where the alien child in the beginning says he has a boring time at the theme park, only after shouting ‘Woo hoo’ on a ride. Yes kids change their mind a lot, but this made no damn sense to me at all. I also can’t be alone when I find it odd how the umpire didn’t hear the catcher tell Michael about the pitches. I mean that is straight up cheating man and we don’t want Michael to encourage that. It is weird how there were no news reports of the aliens crashing into Earth and straight to the ground, taking them to Tune World. I mean it’s common for aliens to make a mess when they crash land on films and it should’ve been as relevant as what happened to the stars, if not more. That is just creepier than Larry Johnson and Bill Murray being nonchalant of Michael getting lassoed into a freaking golf hole. It does come off funny, but that’s ridiculous. I know Blanko is the idiot in the Monstar group, but it’s so dumb how the others forgot what Bugs Bunny look like when they were the ones who pitched abducting the Tunes. That’s dumber than the falling for Bugs’ plea to give the Tunes a chance to defend themselves from a fake rule book. I bet that Michael was a good sport allowing Stan to drive him home, but he should’ve rented a limo instead of his rusty car. Continuity errors are a big gripe for me when watching a film, so this one is no exception. You cannot deny that there were two different television sets used during the sequence of Michael’s kids watching it. One shot has the GE logo on the TV before Michael leaves the room. The other shot shows one without the logo by the time the Tunes are on the air. It is smart that the basketball season gets cancelled because of what happened to the five players. My question is how are the incidents not investigated? You bet the bottom dollar that if they did, someone would’ve spotted the pink phantasm on the players and know they encountered aliens. What also didn’t make sense to me is how Charles Barkley sees the same psychiatrist as the other four players, yet doesn’t have the same day of medical exams as them? I mean I really don’t see a reason why he wouldn’t have it. That’s weirder than how they don’t ask Michael anything about the ball that contained their talents. I can’t even find a reason why Michael would stay at Tune World and not get his gear from his home. It is another funny moment when Bugs & Daffy do it but because there’s no confirmed deadline until the game, I feel like MJ could’ve had the time to do it on his own. The last thing that confused me more from that scene is how the dog Charlie made its way from its dog house to the closet. This animal isn’t a cartoon, so this didn’t make sense either. However, there is still enough fun to consume in this film that’ll make you forget about these flaws. To wrap up, Space Jam will remain a fun family film for every generation and I recommend this for those that either love Looney Tunes or basketball.
Comentarios