Subject: REVIEW: SPACE JAM (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Scott Renshaw)
Date: 13 Nov 1996 22:30:34 GMT

SPACE JAM
                       A film review by Scott Renshaw
                        Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw

(Warner Bros.)
Starring:  Michael Jordan, Wayne Knight, Bill Murray, voices of Danny
DeVito, Billy West.
Screenplay:  Leo Benvenuti & Steve Rudnick and Timothy Harris & Herschel
Weingrod.
Producers:  Ivan Reitman, Joe Medjuck, Daniel Goldberg.
Director:  Joe Pytka.
MPAA Rating:  PG (mild profanity, adult humor).
Running Time:  85 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

     Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny share top billing in Warner Bros.' live
action/animation extravaganza SPACE JAM, but I'm going to go out on a limb
to suggest that it was made more for those who grew up with His Airness
than for those who grew up with His Hareness.  Jordan is a superstar in an
era where the line between entertainment and marketing is more like a
faint smudge, and SPACE JAM is a film which defines the state of the art
in tie-ins:  action figures, Happy Meals, clothing, soundtrack albums and
on and on and on.  That kind of emphasis on merchandising made it a long
shot for artistic merit, but I hoped the Looney Tunes could make for some
genuine lunacy.  No such luck, Doc.  SPACE JAM is a sporadically amusing
cartoon for a rapid-edit audience with too little of the classic Warner
wit.

     The story involves an extraterrestrial entrepreneur named Swackhammer
(voice of Danny DeVito), owner of an outer space amusement park called
Moron Mountain which is in need of a new attraction.  Swackhammer thinks
earth's wacky Looney Tunes characters are just the thing, so he sends five
diminutive henchmen to bring them back.  Head Looney Tune Bugs Bunny
(voice of Billy West) cleverly convinces the tiny aliens to play a
basketball game for their freedom...at least he thinks it's clever until
the aliens steal the talent of NBA players including Charles Barkley,
Patrick Ewing and Larry Johnson and become the Monstars.  In an attempt to
even the odds, Bugs recruits Michael Jordan, currently in the middle of
his basketball retirement and playing baseball for the minor league
Birmingham Barons.  Thus begins the Space Jam, with Michael lacing up the
high-tops again to save his two-dimensional pals from intergalactic
slavery.

     Anyone who has seen Michael Jordan in any of his several thousand
commercial appearances (McDonald's, Gatorade, Nike, Hanes) should not be
surprised to hear that he has very little screen presence.  Jordan has
exactly one facial expression when trying to act -- eyebrows raised, lips
pursed in a wrinkled smirk -- and he runs the gamut of emotions from
affable bemusement to amiable bemusement.  That makes it challenging 
enough for him to work with another human actor, weighing down an
otherwise amusing scene where a star-struck catcher feeds Jordan
information about what pitches to expect.  When he is expected to react to
animated characters, he is utterly lost.  It isn't that much of the comedy
involves interaction between Jordan and the 'Tunes; mostly he is asked to
be pleasant and dunk in slow motion.  There just seems to be no particular
reason why Jordan couldn't have been animated himself, where an artist
could have made him more...well, animated.

     Of course, the animated segments have their own problems.  Make no
mistake, SPACE JAM is going to be entertaining to 10-year-olds, relying
on the slapstick violence which has always characterized Looney Tunes.  
What's missing is the subversive, adult-oriented humor of the Looney Tunes
of old, and not "adult-oriented" in the sense that it was crude.  The
classic Warners cartoon capers took the time to build both visual and
verbal gags, but director Joe Pytka doesn't believe his audience will have
that kind of patience.  SPACE JAM's idea of sharp satire is a reference to
the Disney-owned Mighty Ducks NHL franchise, and it is disspiriting to
find the 'Tunes scraping for laughs by uttering lines like "Nice butt," or
"We're getting screwed."  It also seems strangely appropriate that Bugs
Bunny is voiced by Billy West; with its bodily functions humor, SPACE JAM
seems less like a vehicle for Bugs than one for West's other cartoon voice
roles, Ren and Stimpy.

     SPACE JAM only really comes to life when Bill Murray appears as
himself.  Murray's comic persona is the human descendent of Bugs Bunny, a
wiseacre rebel unfairly smarter than his adversaries, and he is a riot in
his scant minutes.  He is also virtually the only reason for an adult to
slog through SPACE JAM.  For the kids, it provides well-known 'Tunes; for
the teens, it provides well-known tunes (covers of "Fly Like an Eagle" by
Seal and "Basketball Jones" by the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction pairing
of Barry White and Chris Rock); for both, it provides perhaps the most
well-known athlete on the planet.  SPACE JAM is a commercial construct,
and it feels like it.  How sad that a brilliant comic creation like Bugs
Bunny has to ride shotgun with a wooden basketball star, all to provide a
set of collector's cups.

     On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 err Jordans:  4.

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