Jordan Devlin

Rating: 3/10 (27 February 2020)

I was surprised to learn that the "How Did That Get Made" podcast had picked "Space Jam" as one of the movies they were going to do. Though I hadn't seen the movie in years, I remember as a 16 year old, taking my younger brother to see it at the cinema - just the two of us and it wasn't, in my memory at least, a bad film. Turns out, they were right, as the movie is a pretty shambolic mix of advertisements and nonsense.
With his space amusement park failing, Mr. Swackhammer (Danny DeVito) sends his lackeys to Earth to capture the Looney Tunes characters as his new attraction. Thinking fast, Bugs Bunny (Billy West) says that the Tunes characters have the right to defend themselves in a competition of their choosing. Given the small stature of their captures, Bugs picks Basketball, but the Aliens have a plan, and steal the skills of various NBA players (as well as a series of physical enhancements). Seeing that they'll now struggle, the tunes recruit Michael Jordan to play for their team.
Overall it's a bit of a mess. I can actually take the advertisements, they're not as egregious as it's been made out to be in other areas, but the plot is horribly under baked and lacking, the voices sound wrong (mostly because they're different people) and worst of all, it's not funny. Not even slightly. Not even when Bill Murray is in it. The best bits, oddly, revolve around the real human basketball players and their struggles once the aliens have taken their basketball skills. Their visits to hospitals and psychiatrists trying to get to the bottom of it. The animation work is poor too, with the interaction with the real world less convincing than "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" despite that being almost a decade later.
Michael Jordan actually does OK performance-wise. So much so you wonder why he hasn't taken up acting since his actual retirement and he's unquestionably the greatest NBA player of all time, so I understand the desire to eulogise him in a film like this. But even taking into consideration "It's a Kids film", like that's some sort of genuine excuse, "Space Jam" is far from a slamdunk.
Also. R-Kelly (Shudder).