366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Joe Pytka
FEATURING: Michael Jordan, Bill Murray, Wayne Knight; voices of Billy West, Dee Bradley Baker, Bob Bergen, Kath Soucie, Danny DeVito
PLOT: Recently retired basketballer Michael Jordan is abducted by Bugs Bunny and the “Looney Tunes” gang to help them avoid enslavement by the evil Swackhammer, corporate overlord of Planet Moron.
COMMENTS: The other night, I let the mid-’90s wash over me like a quarter-century-old wave of dodged memories. They were all there: late-to-new-career Michael Jordan, mid-career Bill Murray, post-career “Looney Tunes,” and radio-friendly basketball hip hop . Wheaties, Gatorade, and KFC all had name drops or slogan references. And there I was: having very little idea who any of these athletes were. However, I did recognize the salient cinematic points of interest. Space Jam is the kind of movie that screams 1990s: the pacing, the musical score, the editing transitions, and the impressively hit-and-miss humor. Growing up, everyone I knew from school had seen this; now, I too can say that I have seen Space Jam, and I find myself utterly unbothered for having done so.
The story takes little more than sixty minutes to tell, which I gather is appropriate for a game consisting of four fifteen-minute quarters. Michael Jordan (Michael Jordan) has just announced his retirement from basketball in order to pursue his dream of mastering the world of baseball. He does badly on the Boston Barons team, but is beloved by the holdover fans. His life evolves from mildly depressing to mildly annoying when Stan Podolak (Wayne Knight) becomes his personal assistant. In the parallel story, alien overlord Swackhammer (voiced by Danny DeVito) orders his goons to filch a new attraction for his failing amusement park, sending them lightly brained but heavily armed to the land of “Looney Tunes.” The real and animated worlds collide mid-golf round while Jordan is on the links with Bill Murray and Larry Bird. Soon, the big game comes and…
…and at around the thirty-seven-minute mark, when everything had been set up, I began to worry. There were still fifty minutes of this benign nonsense to go, and I couldn’t imagine how far they might stretch it. However, this being “Looney Tunes,” I should have known to count on it not over-staying its welcome. Before the fifteen-plus minutes of credits, we meet sassy, mid-’90s “Don’t Ever Call Me ‘Doll'” hot bunny girl Lola, view an inordinate number of Bugs Bunny butt-shots, hear a delightful bitch-o-logue from Daffy Duck while he visits our world to retrieve Jordan’s lucky sports gear, and sit in adequately-entertained wonder while a well-paced finale teaches us the importance both of self confidence and having a Murray-ex-machina on the sidelines.
Space Jam is a childhood touchstone for many, and having watched it for the first time in (comparatively) old age, I begrudge them not a jot. This viewing is timely, too, as we brace ourselves for the new Space Jam saga; I know I’m not the only one hoping we can get Alfred Eaker‘s two cents on that forthcoming cultural feast.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: