In 1996, a young 13-year-old me didn’t so much drag my family to see Space Jam as convince them by osmosis that this would be the most important film of our lives. In retrospect, I was wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that of the animated films for kids in the 90s, Space Jam had a surprising impact. It earned $230mil worldwide on an $80mil budget in an era before one expected a blockbuster film to near or break the $1bil mark. And it spawned new merchandise and even its own video game (not exactly surprising for the era, but still a fun fact).
While folks today look back at the film with humorous horror, critics of the day didn’t exactly hate it. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel both gave it a thumbs up. Leonard Maltin in his 2010 movie guide praised Michael Jordan’s performance and the understandably impressive visual effects for the time. Others were more critical, such as Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones, who apparently did hate it and whose views are understandable given he directed numerous Warner Bros. productions and gave us Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975)! Meanwhile, 1996 me, a most esteemed critic, would have told you that we repeatedly rented and eventually owned the VHS to Space Jam, and we played it quite a lot.
Today, its present Rotten Tomatoes critics score hovers around 43%, and if you ask people who have seen the film what they think, a good chunk will jump into glorious jokes about how ridiculous it is. A film about wacky cartoon characters convincing a professional basketball player to help them beat souped-up cartoon aliens from an evil capitalist empire run by green-ified Danny DeVito. Who would have thought such a thing could be so bananas.
On top of those critical accolades (and detractions), the film is also infamous for its long-lived 90s website and its delicious (yes, delicious) soundtrack, perhaps even more so than for the film itself. If you were born in the 80s, then you can probably blame this film for the fact that you know the lyrics to Seal’s rendition of Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle” or R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” or, shocking as it seems, the actual theme song to space jam by Quad City DJ’s. Everybody get up. It’s time to slam now. We gotta real jam goin’ down. Welcome to the space jam. Here’s your chance, do your dance at the space jam. ALRIGHT!
And here we are on the precipice of a sequel starring Lebron James, perhaps the only other basketball player who has business following Michael Jordan.
While 1996 me would have told you that this was one of the best films of my childhood, 2021 me returned to a blu ray wondering just how well a goofy film about cartoon characters playing basketball with an actual legend would hold up. Could this film really hold a candle to my 1996 memory?
Yes.
Space Jam is everything its critics new and old have said. It is a zany, overloaded with slapstick, and, frankly, the epitome of a love letter to the Looney Tunes. It’s also a film that doesn’t really care about plot in the same way that it doesn’t care about basketball, and it seems to relish in that fact more than anything else — to its credit. While basketball is central to the story, nothing about the game we watch between the Looney Tunes characters (plus Jordan) and the Monstars resembles basketball except that there are baskets and the balls go in them. Marvin the Martian serves as the referee, but he’s largely useless because none of the characters other than Jordan seem to particularly care about the rules. The Monstars and Tunes both maim and destroy one another in ways that make every basketball brawl look positively tame. Here, all the familiar Tunes antics are on display, from explosions to objects falling from the sky and beyond. How exactly does a film about basketball work if it doesn’t actually care about basketball?
Part of this concerns the film’s dramatic component, which provides a somewhat fictional account of Jordan’s retirement from basketball in the 90s and his Minor League Baseball experiment. As in the real world, Jordan cited the murder of his father as his inspiration for trying baseball, and that, too, is presented here as a young Jordan receives encouraging advice from his father. This story, while taking dramatic license for effect with Jordan’s real life, provides a solid foundation for the cartoonish elements of the film. That is especially so in the final moments of the Tune/Monstar basketball game, in which Jordan’s arm stretches like a cartoon character as he is pulled to the ground by all of the souped-up Monstars.
Jordan’s become-looney moment harkens to the opening scene in which young Jordan is told by his father that “if you get good enough, you can do anything you want to” while “I Believe I Can Fly” plays in the background. The film uses this to set up “belief” as its central message. Belief in dreams. Belief in the impossible. The film is littered with “belief” sequences. Jordan’s belief in himself as a child to the actualization of that dream in the credits, filled with Jordan highlights from his career. A father’s belief in his son. Later, an equally powerful — and humorous — belief on the part of Bill Murray (as himself) that he can play professional basketball; he gets his shot and shines, and he chooses to leave on a high note limping away to a hypothetical ice bath.
That sense of belief runs through everything in the film even as it plays with the idea that talent is innate and can be stolen by alien technology. Belief is so powerful, in fact, that Bugs Bunny’s trickery after the first half of the basketball game — convincing everyone that Jordan uses a special water that gives him power — immediately turns the team into basketball greats. Ultimately, the fact that the Monstars lose despite having the talent of a Dream Team reaffirms that belief matters more than talent. Talent is a vehicle to success, but it has to be molded and shaped, not simply acquired.
While the main reason for Space Jam‘s refusal to acknowledge that basketball is a game with actual rules — perhaps to the frustration of adults who know better — rests on its reliance on the slapstick comedy of the Tunes, there is equal reason for it in the film’s reliance on belief as its central appeal. Belief is tuned to eleven like hot hands here, driven to such delightful extremes by the absurdity of the Looney Tunes. You can achieve anything, the film seems to say, even if that means stretching your arm 20 feet across a basketball court to make the game-winning basket! This is hardly unusual for a movie meant for children, but it is one that seems especially powerful given that so much of the Looney Tunes oeuvre relies on that stubborn grasp on self-belief — often for our amusement and in the context of an almost surrealist portrayal of character and violence.
Needless to say, re-watching this film some 20 years later was a pure delight. Space Jam won’t win any major awards for the story it tries to tell, but the kid in me doesn’t much care. It’s fun and wacky and enamored with the idea that we can all become greats even if we’re not Jordan. That feels pretty good.
