My Movie Review/Rant on Space Jam
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 the film'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. When you think about it more, I'm also certain that there'd be tons of other methods Swackhammer would've come up with outside of enslaving the Looney Tunes, such as fixing up his old rides or creating new ones, so from a business standpoint...it really makes the idea he came up with in this movie all-the-more questionable.
In addition to this, Danny DeVito's talents as Swackhammer 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 contains.
You wanna what else doesn't help the matter?
It seemed like in order to help the whole "Looney Tunes recruiting Michael Jordan to defeat aliens" thing work, the filmmakers resorted to character assassinating the cartoon characters themselves!
Here's why:
If you look back on all the classic Looney Tunes cartoons, you'll find that characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are individuals who, no matter how bleak things get, are always able to come out on top & get the best of their adversaries! Not to mention they have a tendency to defy logic anyway, so they don't restrict themselves to story expectations.
And yet, somehow, a bunch of dim-witted & stupid aliens are able to get the upper-hand over them & the rest of the characters.
How is that even remotely possible?!
Using lasers and absorbing the abilities of basketball players shouldn't be enough to intimidate any of the Looney Tunes. Or be enough to recruit Michael Jordan, for that matter.
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.