Space Jam (1996)

 

Space Jam actually had its origins in TV commercials. Bugs Bunny and basketball player, Michael Jordon had appeared in a pair of Nike commercials together. Despite Warner Brothers' initial resistance to place Bugs Bunny in commercials with Michael Jordon, these commercials proved to be incredibly popular. During a conversation between a Nike executive and producer Ivan Reitman (director of Stripes (1981) and Ghostbusters (1984)) lead to the idea of expanding these commercials to a feature length movie. The director placed in charge of this feature film would be Joe Pytka, who had directed the TV commercials. In the fall of 1994, the film would begin production. This would be Pytka's second non-documentary feature film. As such Reitman claimed that he helped out a lot with the directing stating, "Pytka was definitely the director of the movie, but in fact, I was the director of the movie because I ended up doing all the animation. When it came to the big game, between the all-stars and the real basketball players, I ended up doing most of that stuff." 

Michael Jordon had never appeared in a movie before this. He had been offered film roles before, but his manager David Falk made him turn the roles down feeling the Jordon should only appear as himself. To have Jordon in the movie took up $16 million of the film's budget. 

It was originally planned for this movie to be animated at Warner Classic Animation, but Ivan Reitman decided instead to do the animation at his own company, Northern Lights and hire his own animation crew. This crew would be led by Jerry Rees and Steve Leiva. However, production began to fall behind schedule and Ron Tippe from Warners Feature Animation became one of the film's producers. Added to the film's animators were artists from Warners' Glendale unit, who were busy working on the movie, Quest for Camelot (1998), which was having a troubled production as well. Because of this additional help was done by studios such as Premiere, Uli Meyer, Stardust, Warner Feature Animation London, Character Builders, Heart of Texas, Calibash, Canuck Productions and High Horse. Even artists from Dreamworks worked on this picture. About 500 animators worked on this film and were given less than a year to complete it before the release date of November 11, 1996. This escalated the budget to $110 million.  

This film's storyline is appropriately looney. After retiring from basketball and becoming a baseball player, Michael Jordon's sports career is really struggling. His kids are tired of being a laughingstock thanks to Michael's poor performance on the ballfield. Meanwhile a group of tiny aliens are told by their boss to forcibly bring the Looney to perform at his struggling theme park. When the aliens arrive in Looney Tune Land to force the Looney Tunes to come with them, the tunes take notice of the aliens' small stature. Because of this they decide to challenge the aliens to a basketball game. However, the aliens end up stealing the talent and stature from some of the world's greatest basketball players. Fearing that they might lose the game, the Looney Tunes go to Michael Jordon for help.

While not a perfect movie, Space Jam is a lot of fun. The storyline may be very silly, but this is a Looney Tunes movie, so that works just fine. This story unfolds at a brisk pace and the hour, and a half is over before you know it. There is not one dull moment in this whole movie. The humor itself can be a bit hit or miss but when it is funny, it is really funny. Like the classic Looney Tunes, the humor here mixes silly cartoon slapstick with some clever satire. The scenes involving the basketball players after their talent was stolen are especially clever and an example of comedy that will appeal to the adults more than the kids. Some of the slapstick involving the Looney Tunes can be quite funny, especially during the big game. Sniffles' cameo is laugh out loud funny. These truly funny moments are funny enough to make up for the comedic parts that fall flat like most everything involving Wayne Knight's character and some forced fart and butt jokes. The animation of the Looney Tunes characters is surprisingly consistently strong considering the number of animators working on the film (some of the cartoony effects involving the live action characters don't hold up so well though).

The voice work by Billy West (Bugs, Elmer Fudd), Dee Bradley Baker (Daffy, Taz), Bob Bergen (Porky, Tweety, Marvin, Barnyard Dawg, Hubie and Bertie), Bill Farmer (Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn), Maurice LaMarche (Pepé Le Pew), June Foray (Granny), Kath Soucie (Lola) and Danny De Vito (the film's villain) is excellent, especially for a film made only a few years after Mel Blanc's death. These voice actors truly help make these characters feel the same as they do in the classic cartoons. This voice cast will be familiar to any cartoon fan. Billy West is probably best known for voicing Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg, Zapp Brannigan and Nixon on Futurama as well as the title characters of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Dee Bradley Baker has voiced many incidental and supporting characters in TV cartoons as well as Klaus in American Dad and Perry the Platypus in Phineus and Ferb. Bill Farmer has been the voice of Goofy since 1987. Maurice LaMarche voiced the Brain in Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain as well as Kiff on Futurama. Kath Soucie was the voice of Phil and Lil in Rugrats, Fifi La Fume and Li'l Sneezer in Tiny Toon Adventures and most famously Dexter in Dexter's Laboratory. June Foray is of course a voice acting legend and had voiced Granny in many of the classic shorts. Jack Plance was originally going to voice the villain, but Danny DeVito took over the role. As a reason for this W.R. Miller wrote in Jerry Beck's The Animated Movie Guide, "Danny DeVito replaced him for the same reason Bill Murray was in the picture: he's friends with the producer."  

One rule of thumb imposed on the artists of this movie is that none of the Looney Tunes could be taller than Michael Jordon. Bugs Bunny was used as the yardstick when it came to these characters and measured at 3 feet and 3 inches. A total of 83 Looney Tunes characters appear in this film, most of them as cameos. 

Unfortunately, Reitman refused what would have been the movie's greatest Easter Eggs. These included caricatures (or real photos) of the classic Looney Tunes directors in Town Hall and a statue of Looney Tunes producer Leon Schlesinger. Animation buffs can bemoan that these weren't included in the final film. 

Probably the biggest effect this movie had on the Looney Tunes franchise was the introduction of Lola Bunny. This character would go on to appear in Baby Looney Tunes, The Looney Tunes Show, New Looney Tunes, the Looney Tunes web cartoons, Tweety's High Flying Adventure (2000), Looney Tunes: Rabbit's Run (2015) and of course the sequel Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021). She would become a fan favorite and is the most popular Looney Tunes character to not appear in the classic shorts. 

The movie did fairly well at box office, grossing $90.5 million in the US and $250.2 million worldwide. It earned $27.5 on its opening weekend. Despite this success, it did not gross as much as the studio had hoped and this (and the box-office bombing of Tim Burton's Mars Attacks (1996)) lead to Ted Turner order staff cutbacks throughout the corporation including some in Warner TV Animation. 

Critical response was rather mixed. Siskel and Ebert gave the film two thumbs up. Siskel enjoyed the movie with reservations, while Ebert loved it. Ebert would write a review stating, "Space Jam is a happy marriage of good ideas—three films for the price of one, giving us a comic treatment of the career adventures of Michael Jordan, crossed with a Looney Tunes cartoon and some showbiz warfare. ... the result is delightful, a family movie in the best sense (which means the adults will enjoy it, too)." Leonard Maltin in his movie guide gave the film three out of four stars stating, "Jordan is very engaging, the vintage characters perform admirably ... and the computer-generated special effects are a collective knockout." TV Guide was much more critical giving it only two stars and stating, "cynical attempt to cash in on the popularity of Warner Bros. cartoon characters and basketball player Michael Jordan, inspired by a Nike commercial." Someone who was not a fan of this movie was Chuck Jones (who had directed many classic Looney Tunes shorts). Chuck would clearly state, "I thought it was terrible." He felt the Looney Tunes were out of character here and that Bugs would not need help to defeat the aliens. He also hated one line in particular stating, . "I can tell you, with the utmost confidence, Porky Pig would never say, 'I think I wet myself.'"



Heavily due to Quad City DJ's title song, Seal's cover of Steve Miller's Fly Like an Eagle and R. Kelly's, I Believe I Can Fly, the soundtrack album reached No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200.

This movie also received a 1996 video game adaption for PlayStation and Sega Saturn. That game of course mostly revolves around playing basketball, though the game begins with you as Daffy having to find Michael Jordon's uniform while avoiding the family dog and later has you play as Bugs in a minigame where you find water for "Michael's Secret Stuff". The game would get horrible reviews and would justifiably be forgotten. 

Resources Used

The Animated Movie Guide Edited by Jerry Beck

Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide by Leonard Maltin

https://www.looper.com/211131/the-untold-truth-of-space-jam/

https://cartoonvibe.com/lola-bunny/