“We gotta get new agents. We’re getting screwed.”
- Daffy Duck (voice of Dee Bradley Baker), Space Jam
One of these endorsements resulted in a popular Super Bowl commercial in which Jordan teams up in a basketball game with “Looney Tunes” star Bugs Bunny against Marvin the Martian. The spot was referred to as “Hare Jordan”. Jordan’s agent, David Falk, went to Warner Bros. Pictures (the corporate owners of the “Looney Tunes”) to convince them of the massively popular groundswell that this particular commercial generated. Desperate to generate their own Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the studio hired Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman to produce the world’s first feature film inspired by a commercial.
The first thing Reitman did was hire the man behind the Super Bowl commercial, Joe Pytka. Pytka, a veteran of music videos and commercials, had directed only one other film prior: the Richard Dreyfuss gambling comedy Let It Ride. Reitman also contracted the animators it would take to bring this spectacle to life; rather than working at Warner Bros., the team found themselves at Universal where they had to endure the monotonous Jaws-themed tram tour stop right outside their door. As Roger Rabbit was the high watermark this new project was aiming for, Reitman called director Robert Zemeckis to ask his advice. Zemeckis replied, “Don’t do it. It nearly killed me.” Undeterred with the Academy Award-winner’s warning, Reitman hired the same visual effects supervisor of Roger Rabbit, Ed Jones, to do the same job for the film soon to be titled Space Jam.
The live-action portions of the film were shot first, bringing in real-life NBA stars and noted Chicago Bulls fan/Reitman alumni Bill Murray. The Looney Tune Land sequences where filmed with Jordan on a massive green screen stage working with actors in head-to-toe green onesies, playing the various Looney Tunes characters. In his contract, Jordan requested the studio build him his own basketball court near the soundstages, not only so he could practice for the film but also keep in shape for the upcoming NBA season. Of course, this drew a lot of attention at Warner Bros. and quite a few stars wanted to play against Jordan, most notably George Clooney.
This film was a huge gamble for Warner Bros., who were banking on both the likability of the world’s most famous athlete and the recognizability of their famed cartoon characters. An equation that included a relatively unknown director, a powerhouse producer, four (count ‘em, four) writers, Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes. What could possibly go wrong?
In the underground world of “Looney Tune Land”, the most famous cartoon characters have a close encounter with the “Nerd” kind: the weak-willed and diminutive aliens Nerdlucks, who come to issue an ultimatum - come work for their boss Swackhammer (voice of Danny De Vito) at his outer-space theme park or else. While the Tunes take their threat seriously, they don’t take the aliens themselves seriously; taking off on their stature, Bugs and company challenge them to a basketball game. The Nerdlucks have never heard of basketball, let alone play it, so they go to Earth to secretly steal the talents of the NBA’s top players; inadvertently causing a national crisis. They return to the Tunes as oversized basketball-playing behemoths dubbed the Monstars. Deciding that the odds need to be made even, the Tunes literally rope in the greatest basketball player alive, Michael Jordan (naturally as himself). There’s just one problem: Jordan retired himself from the game and now spends his days as a middling minor-league baseball player. But ultimately, Michael becomes embedded in their cause and the battle to save the Looney Tunes takes to the court.
Because this movie came out in the mid-‘90s (not to be confused with the Jonah Hill film of the same name), more than a few people of my generation love this movie more than life itself. And I must admit as a kid, I too was taken with it to the point where I had a makeshift Tune Squad shirt. But as I grew older and immersed myself in the classic Looney Tunes cartoons of Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson, I came to a conclusion: this movie is bad. It is so remarkably cheesy and cynical; made purely to merchandise and capitalize. The unrelenting rabid fanbase cannot see past their own nostalgia and understand that this is not how these characters should be depicted. Even Chuck Jones himself said that his Porky Pig would never admit to public urination.
The weakest part of the whole film for me is the main voice cast. Understandably, the shoes of Mel Blanc are impossible to fill. Ever since his death, there has been a revolving door of actors to play the main Looney Tunes characters. The one actor who comes the closest is Mel’s own son, Noel, who assisted his father in his later years with voiceover sessions and ended up developing a fairly accurate mimicry of his father’s characters. Noel was asked to play the majority of his father’s characters in Space Jam, but ultimately was replaced due to contract negotiations stalling out. Billy West and Dee Bradley Baker were cast in the roles of Bugs and Daffy, respectively. These two guys are among the cream of the crop of modern-day voice actors and have done and continue to do great work. However, they are wildly miscast here. Their voices just do not fit these two particular characters and they are the two main leads of the Looney Tunes, so they get the lion’s share of screen time.
One negative element about the film that I would actually like to defend is the performance of Michael Jordan. When critics pick apart this movie, they often cite Jordan as a terrible actor. That is quite unfair as, obviously, Jordan is not an actor by trade. Not only that but the man is playing himself! Sir Lawrence Olivier could not play Michael Jordan if he tried. Having said that, one of Jordan’s co-stars might have been better suited for the lead: the legendary Bill Murray as himself. Putting one of the world’s funniest actors around the world’s funniest cartoon characters should be a no-brained but the movie only brings Murray to Looney Tune Land at the end. He is easily the best part of the whole film and even has the funniest line, explaining how he got to the game (“Producer’s a friend of mine...”).
Space Jam is less a movie and more of a time capsule of what the ‘90s were. It emodied the crass commercialism that had invaded pop culture. Its story is ludicrous, its characters wildly misrepresented and it relies way too heavily on close-ups. Famed director Joe Dante, a dyed in the wool Looney Tunes fanatic, was given the opportunity to bring the characters back to the silver screen with his 2003 film Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Unfortunately, that film was built on the back of previously developed Space Jam sequels (i.e. Race Jam with NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon and Spy Jam with Jackie Chan). Due to Warners prioritizing the Matrix sequels over Back in Action, the film was a dismal failure at the box office and Dante has not directed a studio film since. In more recent years, Warner Bros. has developing a direct sequel to Space Jam, this time with modern NBA superstar LeBron James. Black Panther director Ryan Coogler will be stepping into the producing role that Ivan Reitman had for the original film. All I can say regarding this sequel sight unseen is Coogler is a smart and talented filmmaker and he certainly cannot possibly make the movie worse than the original.
UPDATE:
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