“World famous basketball star teams up with animated animals to defeat slave-owning space aliens” sounds more like a 3am pub pitch than an $80m Warner Bros. investment, but anything went in 1996.
More than two decades on, the Looney-Tunes-meets-Michael-Jordan tie-in remains an essential dive into the wacky world of cartoon crossover movies. From the dodgy costume choices and the slapstick humour, to guest spots from real sporting icons and film stars, it’s a bonkers-but-brilliant cult classic.
Like many such films, the critics sneered at Space Jam upon its release, dubbing it too scatterbrained, too haphazard with its treatment of the Looney Tunes themselves. But such critiques entirely miss the point of the Tunes’ descriptor: this is meant to be Looney. Yes, Space Jam is a weird addition to the Looney Tunes canon, but it’s wilfully so. It’s the film’s absurdity that makes it so brilliant.
When it was released, Jordan’s unparalleled basketball career was at its peak. Can you imagine today’s sports stars making the move from masterful athlete to Bugs Bunny’s best buddy? Jordan never once questions his abduction into the Looney Tunes universe – there’s not even a crowbarred-in “am I dreaming?” segment – he just gets straight down to basketball business, throwing a few knowing winks to the camera for good measure.
That tongue-in-cheek, self-referential streak is central to Space Jam’s enduring appeal. Both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck – who spend much of the film squabbling over the role of chief narrator – break the fourth wall regularly, staring straight down the camera lens and shrugging at the film’s most absurd moments, ensuring the audience remains on board through even the weirdest plot twists.
Jordan joins in the self-mocking, with the film’s core storyline revolving around his ill-fated, real-life sojourn into minor league baseball – while his status as a tabloid-baiting US star is a frequent target for fun. At one point his publicist Stan (played by Wayne Knight of Jurassic Park and Seinfeld fame) comes to grab Jordan from his locker room. “C’mon, Michael, it’s game time,” he cries, “Slip on your Hanes, lace up your Nikes, take your Wheaties and your Gatorade, and we’ll grab a Big Mac on the way to the ballpark” – every item listed was a product Jordan had advertised in that year alone.
Jordan’s not the only basketball player who took shots at himself in Space Jam, either – Charles Barkley, who plays a talent-stripped version of himself, makes knowing reference to a longstanding tabloid rumour that he once dated Madonna, promising God that he’ll never go out with her again if he can just have his skills back. It’s hard to imagine today’s sports stars having a similar level of self-mockery.
In the absence of any underlying moral purpose (bar the usual “be yourself, kids”), it is the film’s slapstick legacy, and its place in the pantheon of sports films, that have secured its classic status. It is still the world’s highest-grossing basketball film, and one of the highest-grossing sports films of all time.
Much as this year’s England World Cup team were heralded for their humility, and those adorable shots of them frolicking on pool toys, Space Jam’s enduring brilliance is testament to the importance of loosening up and embracing sheer, childish absurdity – stretchy limbs and all.
Space Jam is available now as part of Warner Bros’s eye-catching Iconic Moments Collection, Available on Blu-ray and DVD.
