My Movie Review/Rant on Space Jam · 11:24pm Apr 13th, 2020
Aloha, my friends.
This is your friendly film, TV show, and episode reporter here with another review.
Today, I'm gonna be giving you guys my take of "Space Jam".
Normally, I would start everything off with a summary of the film to help you all become familiar with what it's about. However, after I thought about it more, I found it hard to explain what the premise was other than that it's basically a film where Michael Jordan teaches the Looney Tunes how to play basketball. The reason behind it being that some aliens, lead by Swackhammer, want to make the Looney Tunes slaves of a theme park in outer space called Moron Mountain.
Ladies and gentleman, I'll come clean about this:
After seeing the movie just this morning, I found it to be an uneventful stinker that hardly put a smile on my face, even as a Looney Tunes film.
For instance, the character development in articulation was hugely lacking, mainly because none of the characters had any kind of growth throughout the film and were rather bland. To top it all off, the human-visible cast members looked like they'd rather be doing something else more than be on the screen, especially that of Michael Jordan. The voices of the Looney Tunes and the Mon-Stars sounded kinda annoying, if I may add. A definite example came from Billy West's portrayal of Bugs Bunny, which hardly sounded anywhere close to the late Mel Blanc's portrayal of the character and was extremely squeaky.
On the subject of the film's main antagonist, Swackhammer...I never really cared for him at all. He was basically one of the most bland and forgettable villains I've ever seen. He was nothing but a one-dimensional theme park owner who had little in the ways of a personality, development, or sense of humor. His lack of ultimate motivations other than to find a way to keep his park going did not help in making him more compelling whatsoever, and the fact that he wanted to enslave the Looney Tunes just to "improve" his theme park was likewise not only ridiculous but extremely stupid. In addition to this, Danny DeVito's talents were clearly wasted thanks to getting cast as the character. Along with his performance lacking personality and humor compared to much of his other work, DeVito sounded as if he was openly restrained.
Likewise, the Mon-Stars were less-than-memorable additions, and the reasons behind that are pretty much the same as Swackhammer. Even when they absorbed the talents of the other basketball players featured in the film, they were nothing but irritating and idiotic cardboards who lacked personality and depth.
The hand-drawn animation and CGI weren't the most eye-catching either, really.
I get that this movie was made in the late 1990s, but come on! For a film of that time period, the special effects used with things like Moron Mountain and the spaceships looked extremely cheesy, especially to where you could tell it was all done by computer. Along with that, the hand-drawn animation seemed to have a vibe saying that the animators were hardly putting any dedication into their work, even in making sure it blended well with the live-action settings and elements.
Finally, the direction by Joe Pytka, and the story by Leo Benevuti, Steve Rudnick, Timothy Harris, and Herschel Weingard were hardly what I'd like to call award-worthy.
The comedy that was featured wasn't very laughable, as the jokes often fell flat and were awfully cringy despite the film trying to be funny. Likewise, I couldn't help but note that the film was lacking a sense of heart and soul, with little emotional connection between the characters or morals for the characters and audiences to live by. The overall concept had also been so confusing I could hardly understand or get it, which is why I couldn't give a summary of this film before analyzing it. To put it bluntly, the story is not as simple or understandable as people make it sound due to many of the aspects the film contained.
In the end, "Space Jam" was far from fun. Everything about it seemed like a mindless cash-grab by Warner Bros. just to make money off of Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes being in one film, and the way it played out was like it wasn't made by people at all.
So, I rate "Space Jam" one out of five stars.
This movie is a guilty pleasure of mine.
5241920
Guilty pleasure?
5241927
Yup.
5241927
A guilty pleasure is when you enjoy something while knowing that very few other like it or even when you believe that its terrible.
Kinda like how the live action adaptation of Popeye is a guilty pleasure of mine, but geeze I still think it's horrible
Fun fact: this movie was banned in China because of Government concerns that films having animated characters and live actors in the same scenes would confuse children to the point where their concepts of what is real and what is fiction would be irreversibly damaged.
5241932
Honestly, though, the mixture of animation and live-action was probably the only thing I liked about the movie.
I actually liked this movie because it introduced Lola Bunny and showcased how cool under pressure Michael Jordan was.
5241943
Eh, Who Framed Roger Rabbit did it better IMO. This movie isn't...the worst I've seen, I mostly like it for the memes it produced
Nah, to be honest, I thought it was a cheesy, but fun movie.
Its not as good as Looney Tunes: Back in Action, but it has its own funny moments.
Yeah I remembered this being an incarnation of mediocre
If you want to see Looney Tunes done right on the big screen, Back in Action is the place to go.
Hoi what is this?
5526025
My opinion on a movie is what it is, Good sir. My opinion.
The best part of Space Jam was the theme song in my opinion.
5526077
Ah.
I think I have to agree with many of your points. I don't think there was a real moment where they actually tried to do a joke (they just do random things which kind of makes you laugh, but not full blown) and the character development was lacking. It's not those types of movies where you don't feel anything at all, but it isn't a top movie either. Only watched it on plane.
Space Jam 2 looks to be promising in terms of character development, but then who knows.
So you hate the sequel?
5526157
Haven’t seen the sequel. But, I wouldn’t mind giving it a look when it comes out.
Oh
5526437
What?
5526503
Nothing