★★½
Space Jam is a weird film. It follows the real life of Michael Jordan after he retired from basketball to play baseball, inspired by the death of his father. A large part of the first act is dedicated to showing the fandom Jordan amassed around the 90s, with it even stretching to him playing baseball despite his lacking performance which the film openly pokes fun at. This is interrupted when the Looney Tunes ask for his help in a game of basketball in order to keep them from being enslaved by Mr. Swackhammer (played by Danny DeVito) to serve as attractions in his intergalactic amusement park. Weirdly enough the film somewhat works, the exaggerated portrayal of Jordan’s real life gives the film enough of a cartoonish tone that him meeting the Looney Tunes doesn’t feel all that far-fetched. The only things promised to the audience from the title is space and jams and this film has an immaculate soundtrack from front to back. When the Looney Tunes are on screen it’s non-stop gag after gag. Each tune is distinct enough to where it informs the gags they are a part of, bringing variation to the jokes to keep them from becoming stale; even featuring some jokes purely aimed at adults who may be watching along with a child. Surprisingly, the live action segments equally hold their own when it comes to the comedy. Like when the basketball players get their skills stolen by the antagonists, there are dedicated scenes of them trying to figure out how they lost their skills, which get increasingly more ridiculous each time we come back to them. Another shock is Bill Murray’s addition to the film, that they again poke fun at in a self aware way; he is such a presence, you can tell he is having a fun time improvising and gives off a comforting and charming mood to all of his scenes.
That is not to say this film is without its flaws, if you have grown up with the Looney Tunes, you will instantly notice the voices of around half of the tunes, or at least just bugs and daffy, are different from the original cartoons. This isn’t the filmmaker’s fault as original voice actor Mel Blanc passed away years before the film was made but it is a noticeable absence which Billy West and Dee Bradley Baker fail to replicate. Even characters made for the film like the little alien antagonists give pretty uninspired performances. As a non-professional, Jordan does an okay job when acting against other people but against cartoons that he can’t see, he understandably has a hard time, he’s just too rigid and serious, not matching the tone. Being a film from ’96, the green screen looks as unnatural as you can imagine but surprisingly in the scenes where cartoon characters enter the real world, it is done really well, their interactions with real world objects are seamless. I should dislike the CGI models of people, such as when Jordan is contorted into a basketball, but they do have a certain charm to their ‘plasticky’ look that I just think suits the film. But as wacky as this film appears on the surface, nothing all that special really happens, its an odd crossover between Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes but beyond that it’s just a by the numbers film with a big game at the end. Yet at the same time it’s so short that it flies by and any mediocre qualities are gone before they start to become grating. 2 and a half stars out of 5, clawing at 3 stars.
