So whose stupid idea was this?

Rating: 2/10 (6 February 2000)

The result of this unholy exhumation of Warner Brothers has-beens is even worse than could have been expected: one of the vilest films ever produced in the United States. It's unique among bad films in the way it starts at the bottom and digs DOWN. I mean, it's bad enough that it's a basketball movie - the one thing in the world worse than a baseball movie (although baseball finds its way into the plot as well). It's bad enough that it's one big Michael Jordan publicity still. Isn't Jordan just the greatest guy in the world! seems to be the only point behind the opening scenes, especially those honey-covered ones with his family. (Not his real family.)
But then we meet the cartoon characters ... Whoever's responsible for the animation has evidently mistaken motion for life, because we have all the frenetic running around, squashing, stretching and camera-swerving of the world's most over-produced computer game - all in vain. Consider `The Rabbit of Seville', with its staid camera work and underplayed Bugs Bunny. It had less than a third of the motion on display in `Space Jam' - and more than four times as much energy.
But it gets worse. Oh, believe me, does it get worse! I don't know why they made Bugs Bunny the star - he is NOT the most successful creation of Warner Brothers, not by a long shot. Indeed he's scarcely a character at all. He's whatever a talented director makes of him. There's the anarchic Bugs of Tex Avery; the innocent, childlike Bugs of Chuck Jones; the (it must be said) dull, vulgar Bugs of Friz Freleng; and the (sorry) just plain dull Bugs of Robert McKimson. This Bugs is worse than any of them. All the inconsistenies have been added together, and new ones added. Remember what a signal failure the modern-day Mickey Mouse of Disney's `Runaway Brain' was? You ain't seen nothing yet.
I have not yet begun to describe what's wrong with the cartoon bits. Every second of animation is manic but serves no purpose any of the writers might have had, economic motives aside. The art direction is just terrible It's all painfully unfunny. And remember what happened when the Warner Brothers cartoons began to die in the first place, in the 1960s? They were no longer fresh, and writers desperately tried to jolly things along by casting more and more characters alongside each other, with predictable results. Too many zany characters cancel each other out. Well, `Space Jam' combines EVERY SINGLE Warner Brothers character in the one work, and they all do their zany schtick at once - you can imagine how counter-productive this is. No, on second thoughts, you probably I can't. It's worse than you can imagine.
And it CONTINUES to get worse. We're introduced to a new Warner Brothers star (star? hah!) - a `sexy' female rabbit, a feisty basketball player who blows back her ears and says, `Don't call me doll.' Some rap music worms its way into the soundtrack. The climactic basketball game is even more ineptly staged than the earlier scenes would have led us to expect. Possibly worst of all, the slender and soulless plot is laden with enough contrived sentiment to make us scream, `Oh, come ON! No-one in the WORLD is so easily manipulated!'
One final note - something that pleases me. `Space Jam' received its first outing on Australian television only because a cricket game which the network had expected to take place, didn't. THAT puts the movie in its place. Basketball, too.