Liam and Alex are two very different people, but they have two things they share: a love for film and a shoddy memory of films they saw as kids. In an attempt to destroy their treasured nostalgia, the pair revisit these childhood flicks and attempt to piece them together through one drawn-out conversation.
So come on and slam, and Liam and Alex re-welcome you to Space Jam.
Alex: I hadn’t seen ‘Space Jam’ in a while, and I remember it being really funny and really cool. It wasn’t.
Liam: I think Space Jam is a work of genius.
Okay… Do you have a theory?
I have a massive theory, but why don’t you go first?
It’s obviously just a giant commercial, right? The main bad guy, the Danny Devito, he’s like Warner Brothers, and his theme park on the moon is doing terribly, so he’s like,
I think it’s a metaphor for their own stupid desperation in making this movie, just hamming* together two completely unrelated things to make this dumb new “attraction” – the film being that “attraction”.
I actually think it’s a scathing indictment towards the over-marketisation of fame through satire and self-parody…
…holy shit
…and Moron Mountain is actually a dig at Disney – Moron Mountain being Disneyland.
Such a genius. How dare you.
So it opens up with Michael Jordan just as a kid shooting hoops with his father and saying “You can be whatever you want to be”
He believes he can fly, and his dad is seemingly not that impressed with his son’s non-stop slam-dunking.
Cut to a 20 year montage of Michael being amazing.
Then there’s a beautiful shot at Michael Jordan’s press conference when he’s saying that he is giving up basketball to go and play baseball. The camera pans up through the roof, into the sky and straight into space. I’m imagining that is very similar to the opening of ‘Gravity’, which I haven’t seen yet. So I’m going to go ahead and call it the most incredible shot of space I have seen.
So we get to Moron Mountain, which looks like a nightmare of a place really…
…where Danny Devito hams his metaphor to his five alien minions and sends them to Looney Tunes land to capture the ‘toons.
I was really distracted by that little gross orange one who is constantly pulling up this loose skin skirt.
And then they go back down to Earth where Michael Jordan sucks at baseball, and yet – this is where the over-marketisation of fame comes in – they all continue to kiss his ass; it’s a misplaced cherishing of a product. He then goes back to his very normal-person house.
In a very open car for one of the most famous sportspeople in the world…
With a humbling lack of paparazzi. Did you notice the first subtle joke in the whole movie? The dog’s name?
No.
Charles.
…
As in Charles Bark-ley
…
Charles Barkley. Probably one of the most famous basketball players of all time.
See, you need to keep me in the kid category here for the sports jokes.
Meanwhile, annoying Newman is a total kiss-ass jogging around after Michael Jordan, just hanging out the whole time driving everyone crazy.
His actual person name is Wayne Knight.
I don’t care.
I only know him as the fat asshole from Jurassic Park.
He’s always the fat asshole.
The last thing he appeared on was an episode of a TV show called Unforgettable. Ironically.
So the Looney Tunes are called to a town meeting in some sort of giant theatre in Looney Tunes land.
They get there by burrowing under a giant supermarket.
Which really means that consumerism builds itself on top of our own childhood desires and cartoon fame. Marketisation.
*groaning* Oh god.
They assemble together and they decide to challenge the tiny aliens, threatening to take them back to Moron Mountain and enslave them, to a game of basketball. Winner takes all. Easy.
Jordan isn’t involved yet. They reckon even without Jordan they can still waste them.
It’s pretty much a done deal, until the aliens decide to get performance-enhancing drugs by going to all of the basketball games and stealing the players’ talent.
There’s a great bit where you start to see all the other basketball players, who I’m assuming are all very famous, react to losing their talent. They are all bloody Oscar winners. Really amazing.
Their entire subplot is really really sad because, tying into my theory, once their fame is gone, they are nothing.
Meanwhile, Michael Jordan is playing golf with Larry Bird and Bill Murray.
How good was Bill Murray’s umbrella hat? 10/10
Bugs sucks Jordan into Looney Hades through a golf hole and we get a reiteration of the plot where Bugs outlines the whole thing. And I was wondering: getting a black man to save you from slavery? Too soon.
Jordan agrees to help regardless. But first, he needs his super shorts.
Considering these guys are magical cartoon creatures who can clean a whole auditorium with their spit… you’d think they could make some super shorts.
Daffy then makes reference to how they’re exclusive property of Warner Brothers.
And then he kisses his own ass eh?!?
It’s a self-parody of character ownership, the socially-perceived joy of being famous and production narcissism for blatantly marketised movies similar to Space Jam.
They’re definitely not trying to hide the fact that this film is just blatant revenue gathering. Did you notice that bit when fat asshole is like:
“Come on Mr Jordan, put on your Hanes, lace up your Nikes, sip some Gatorade and we’ll grab a Big Mac on the way over”
Just nailing the product placement all in one go.
And then there’s Lola…
I think it’s pretty disgusting the way she is sexualised. People do not want to have sex with a cartoon rabbit.
It make sense, though, out of all the cartoon animals that it is the rabbit that’s hyper-sexualised.
It doesn’t need to happen. There are other ways of showing that she’s a female without her having to wear hotpants, tiny little crop top and boobs! Massive human boobs! Eye makeup! Eyelashes! (Actually, I’ll allow those eyelashes.) Even her rabbit tail is pinned onto her hotpants like a Playboy Bunny, yet Bugs gets a normal rabbit tail. It’s not fair.
How could Pepe LePeu contain himself?
Eugh, at least she’s pretty kickass and doesn’t take any shit. I liked that. But it’s just a damn shame that she’s the only female in the film apart Michael Jordan’s wife. But she only has one line that’s like,
So Bugs and Daffy end up going back to Michael Jordan’s house in 3D world while talking about getting screwed over by merchandise royalties, and it turns out Charles Barkley (the dog) is holding the shorts in his mouth and has grown an extra two sizes somehow.
Yeah, the scale went pretty weird for that whole bit.
The Jordan kids end up giving Daffy and Bugs the lucky shorts. Don’t ask questions, like “Hey, where’s our dad?”
Where was the wife during all this?
Cooking cauliflower.
Just trapped in the kitchen under a mountain of cauliflower trying to cook her way out.
Meanwhile, the talentless basketballers ask a clairvoyant what happened to their skill. And that’s where the clairvoyant goes over the entire premise of Space Jam.
This is about the third time the plot is reiterated.
And all the basketball players say “that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard”.
Another parody of Space Jam’s own existence.
It’s true.
On their way back to Looney Tunes land, Daffy and Bugs have that great exchange,
That was a great dig at Disney. And this is where your theory stands up hugely. This might be a thesis subject right here.
So Michael Jordan puts on his shorts and swaggers out to Seal singing Fly Like An Eagle, looking more like he’s going to make love to someone… most likely Lola.
Ew. Go on.
And then we are straight into the game.
…where they get smashed in the first half. At half time, the Looney Tunes turn to their own steroids: “Michael Jordan’s Special Potion” or whatever.
They get the liquid placebo effect and realise/remember that they have Looney Tunes powers.
Like that cool little ‘Pulp Fiction’ nod with Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd.
That keeps true to the Looney Tunes spirit because they often did parodies of popular films.
Eventually, they even the score. They then up the stakes because the Danny Devito alien says,
So he says to him,
That’s the exploitation of fame again.
We are also left with the very dark image of a black man in chains. Again, way too soon.
That’s right! It’s done in that scary Art Deco style.
The imagery is actually pretty intense.
So Danny Devito says “Kill them” and the whole game changes to gridiron basically. So the Looney Tunes resort to bringing fat asshole in.
Who comes onto the court and farts for two minutes. And then he just goes and slips away into ‘Unforgettable’ territory, if you will.
This is when Marvin the Martian, the ref, comes in and says,
This being the one time he enforces any actual rule.
Then B. Murray arrives on the scene in a shining light.
Daffy takes him to the side and says,
And then Daffy looks at camera and says,
He’s just been dropped in by the producer to sew up the whole movie. And to be Bill Murray.
To fill in that extremely obvious plot-hole with star power (not uncommon). Again, self-parody. So they tell Michael Jordan that he can bend the rules of reality.
Not that we haven’t seen them bend the rules of reality at all in the film prior to this.
Allowing Jordan to elongate his arm and score the winning slam-dunk.
I didn’t realise he was going to disgustingly stretch his arm out like that. I was pretty grossed out.
I thought it would have horrible repercussions afterwards, like he’d have to live the rest of his life with this one grotesquely gross arm.
I was thinking about that, like afterwards does it just flop down like some old deflated balloon?
So they win the game. The Monstarz feel stink, their boss goes nuts at them and Michael Jordan asks the aliens why they take orders from him. Then they start to revolt against their Moron Mountain park owner.
The Communist uprising.
Then they give the talent back.
I guess they were also worried Michael Jordan was going to spin around and slap them all with his giant elongated arm.
Jesus, can you imagine the torque power you could get with that thing?
Then Jordan goes back to the Bulls where Bill Murray gives the best delivery of a line maybe of all time when he feebly says “Let’s go Bulls” and you can’t tell if he’s crying or laughing or if he fudged the line.
He does this little quiver in his voice and then makes a tiny little laughing face. I’ve watched it a million times and I can’t figure it out.
And at the end of the credits, just like his baseball career, Jordan realises that the movie industry wasn’t for him.
Yes, when’s he’s all,
Quite clearly a self-reflexive commentary of the over-marketisation of sport-star fame. Have I convinced you of the genius of Space Jam?
You definitely have. I wish I had thought about it as deeply as you did.
I think too much.
