Falling in the shadow of what preceded it and relying on its heightened USP to drive its shoddy narrative, Space Jam just abouts gets by on novelty and energy.

Rating: 6/10 (4 February 2013)

It's difficult to find a stone wall resting place upon which to perch one's self in regards to Space Jam, a film with an immense amount of charm in its thrashing together of live action sporting super stars and the Looney Tunes brigade, although it does come with an equal amount of flaw. This is not, of course, the first time we've seen live action and animation blend together like this; 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the film that immediately springs to mind, and throughout Space Jam it is tough to rid it from one's head once it's in there. The bad news is that Space Jam is a film which needs its cartoonified contingent in order to be at all interesting, whereas you're able to get so wrapped up in Who Framed Roger Rabbit that it's easy to forget you're even watching a live action cross-pollination. In short: you could remove the animated characters from Bob Zemeckis' minor masterpiece and still be caught up in a central character confronting his grief; alcoholism and prejudices as a twisting, adult narrative unfolds around him. Remove the 'toons from this similarly pitched 1996 effort, and you get the likes of Michael Jordan mugging his way through some awkward green-screen routines and a dull circular narrative about him rediscovering his love for the game of basketball.
Ah, yes: Michael Jordan. There are certain personalities in certain sports you've just "heard of", regardless of the sport in question. At the time of the film's production, names synonymous with the likes of golf, tennis and football might very well have been Nicklaus; Sampras and Pele – in Jordan (of whom even I have heard, and I know nothing of the game of basketball) we have a mainstream figure dropped into the centre of a film arriving will all the baggage; hysteria and reputation that comes with him on top of that buzz of seeing cartoon characters that have been famous for as many as three times the number of years Jordan has even existed. Indeed, in case you were not already aware: Jordan is a superstar; a man whose achievements in basketball open the film in montage format. We observe the trophies he's won, the millions of adoring fans he's garnered and even the Olympic medals he's picked up.
Jordan, however, is tired of basketball; a premise to this "character's" existence which might ordinarily be greeted with scoffing and furrowed brows as this stinking rich superstar slumps into an apparent pit of discontent at a life of being suffocated by those around him and adorned just a tad too much by his peers. That is, if we weren't already aware he did indeed grow weary of said lifestyle and thus moved briefly into baseball. Meanwhile, narrative and conflict arrives in the form of a slimy alien creature voiced by Danny de Vito; an alien who owns a theme park on a planet many moons away. He's in monetary trouble, and proposes to his equally bug-like accomplices that they travel to Planet Earth; warp their way, somehow, into our television sets (which apparently hold the key to entry into the programmes aided therein); kidnap an array of the Looney Tunes and bring them back so that they may act as a permanent feature to the theme park, thus reigniting business.
So far, so Looney. The 'toons have an issue with being thrust from their home in order to be taken to somewhere else so that they may perform the same gags over and over again to an ogling audience.....wait-a-second, isn't that what they do anyway? In light of it all, they propose a basketball match with the gribblies: if they win, they stay here; if they lose, they'll pack up and come with them for eternal slavery. Thudding into the narrative hub lumbers Jordan, a basketball player the 'toons recruit equating to certain success, right? Not necessarily: the small, slug like aliens steal the "talents" of various then NBA professionals before growing themselves to a larger scale into order to win the bet.
The film is mostly underdog fluff, but underdog fluff made a little more interesting than usual with the presence of people such as Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck going up against these third party extra-terrestrials, furthermore aided by that basketball player you've probably heard of and that bloke out of Jurassic Park and Basic Instinct. The film's droll liberal agenda dominates proceedings more than any sort of interest in the result or anything else; this is ultimately a film about people and creatures from all walks of life coming together and working as a team, whereas the only "winner" (without giving anything away) is basketball (or more specifically: "sports") itself. The framework about Jordan playing for a cause as worthy as the one wherein he defends a group of little animals from hulking monsters, thus rediscovering his love for the game of basketball, is as meek and as plodding as it sounds whereas one scene wherein a character verbally runs through all the companies & products Jordan has previously endorsed is disturbingly ambiguous in regards to whether it's lampooning how much Jordan has sold out or is just guilt edged product placement. No matter, the film is a blast; the match itself is constructed with energy and verve, while the makers manage to slide in a new Warner Brother's Looney Tune altogether in the form of Lola Bunny - someone who's fresh and fun and doesn't discredit the old guard. Like most of these sorts of things, you'd need to be pretty sniffy to not enjoy it. I went with it, and enjoyed it.