699. Space Jam (1996)

Starring: Michael Jordan, Bill Murray, Wayne Knight

Director: Joe Pytka

Running Time: 88 mins

Space Jam is an American film about a group of aliens who threaten to kidnap the Looney Tunes and take them to their home planet. However, in a bid to defend themselves, the Toons team up with the legendary Michael Jordan to try and save the world…

Of course, this film is so much fun to watch, and despite being one of these horrible cheesy 1990s mainstream kids’ films, it’s not at all frustrating or annoying to watch, with some good jokes and a jolly atmosphere throughout.

However, one huge issue with this film is that the story is absolutely appalling. I’m not a fan at all of ‘sports’ films; I think they’re cheesy, predictable and follow a horrifically scripted formula that makes them largely tedious to follow along to, and sadly, that was the case here.

Luckily, not all of the story is about the sort of last-minute, save-the-day, sports antics, with the training montages and introduction of Jordan’s character before having a little bit more originality away from the sports formula, however even these were boring to watch, still being totally predictable, and incredibly slow-paced and long-winded, meaning that almost any non-comedic part of the story was no fun whatsoever.

Despite that, we know not to expect any sort of decent or intelligent story from this sort of film, it’s all about the goofy fun that’ll entertain the kids, and with that brief, this film does a fantastic job, with largely very simple humour and slapstick, still not up to the quality of the original Looney Tunes cartoons, but simple enough to make anyone smile and enjoy it.

So, it’s pretty obvious that with Space Jam and Back In Action, Looney Tunes aren’t the best characters to integrate into a real-world scenario, but you can’t escape the fact that they’re still a lot of fun for everyone to watch, and that’s why this gets a 6.5.