There are a lot of movies I love,
that I’ve learned a lot of storytelling technique from by repeatedly studying
them. Unfortunately, they usually tend to get blow aside as either “low
production quality” or “kids movies” or something like that. And sure, they
aren’t all masterpieces. In fact, they usually tangle themselves into pretzels
that defy any one genre, skipping easily through several, and meaning every
one. Movies like The Princess Bride; is
it an adventure? A fantasy? A romance? A satire? A fairy tale? It’s all of
those, and it’s honest about being all of those things. The Big Green is a 90’s sports movie, certainly. But it’s also
about hope, the job of teaching, the power of small-town community and an
interesting conundrum of illegal immigration. Space Jam is the one I’m going to talk about for this assignment,
though.
A
diabolical theme-park owner named Swackhammer sends a group of tiny aliens
called Nerdlucks to capture the Looney Tunes in order to enslave them and
increase attendance. The Looney Tunes come up with an escape plan by
challenging the diminutive Nerdlucks to a basketball game. However, the
Nerdlucks steal the talent of NBA superstars, transforming themselves into the
terrifying Monstars. Meanwhile, Michael Jordan has retired from basketball to
try playing professional baseball in order to make good on a promise he made as
a child to his father. So Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and the rest kidnap Michael to get
him to help win the game. The Looney Tunes defeat the evil aliens, the NBA
players get their talent back, and Michael Jordan decides he’s terrible at
baseball and goes back to the Chicago Bulls to win another couple
championships. That’s pretty much the entire plot.
On some level, it could be called historical fiction, given
that it explains Michael Jordan’s first retirement to try (and fail at) playing
professional baseball. Of course the reasoning was changed, as this decision
remains somewhat in mystery, though it likely had something to do with his
father’s murder and outrageous gambling debts. On another level, it’s an
extended screwball comedy, since it features most of the classic Looney Tunes
characters going through their daily lives. And then there is the
science-fiction part of the story, since aliens blast onto Earth in order to
enslave the inhabitants. And oh, yeah, it’s a sports movie on top of everything
else, with cameos from most of the top players of the time, and featuring Bill
Murray and Danny DeVito for good measure. If a cynical viewpoint was to be
taken, it could be said that this movie was made solely for advertising
merchandise. And it was, of course; even the characters mention this. But it
doesn’t take itself seriously, while fully admitting that none of these rules
it’s following make any sense. Because of this, it works. This could be because
a more three-year-old Wesley-approved movie could not have been made if it were
manufactured for me alone in mind, but this report doesn’t have to be
subjective. The greatest basketball player in the world is teaming up with Bugs
Bunny to save the world from a bunch of aliens. Yes, please!
It came to theaters when I was three, and while I don’t
think I remember watching it in theaters, Mom said I hid in her lap when the
Monstars first appeared. I also know that I saw it for the first time in the
theater because she says we were grocery shopping one day not long after and I
recognized a song the PA system was playing(R. Kelly’s “Fly Like an Eagle” or
Seal’s “Fly Like an Eagle” cover) as being from the movie, which she then recognized
after I urgently explained the connection. I can also clearly remember dancing
maniacally to the soundtrack in one of the apartments we lived in. The
soundtrack has Bugs Bunny doing a rap song, of all the insane experiences worth
listening to at least once. There are the detractors who gleefully point out
all the paper-thin plotting, the lack of acting ability from Jordan, or
complain that the Tunes themselves act nothing like themselves. Have they
watched some of those shorts in a while? The Tunes can be mean, and there can
be sex jokes hidden in many of them.
Lola Bunny is an original character expressly designed to
give Bugs a love interest, less-than-expressly to sell merchandise, and
possibly to give girls a role model of Bugs’ standing to admire. I think all of
those goals were met. The appeal of Lola was obvious: she was fantastic at basketball, and independent
and determined. Besides that, she became the girlfriend of Bugs Bunny, so that
automatically got about a thousand bonus points. (I hung out with teenagers all
the time, so some of their attitudes I must have picked up by osmosis.) “She’s
hot!” Tweety says. Feminists can complain that she never really does anything –
and they kind of have a point – but that’s missing the point, really. In the
first place, the story is balanced the way it is already, and to shift anything
would have thrown everything out the window. Secondly – and this is by far the
most important – was the purpose of the story wasn’t to create a masterpiece,
it was to fire the imagination, one of the highest callings I can think
of for story in any medium. So Lola isn’t exactly much else than a bit of
cheerleading damsel in distress in the movie. In kids’ imaginations, she played
a bigger role; maybe she single-handedly saved everyone. Maybe she and Bugs
went on dates and antagonized Elmer Fudd together. Anything was possible. And
the thing is, that same principle applies to every single character. All those
gaps in the movie can be filled in by each viewer, bringing them into the story
like few others can match.
Obviously people can’t be squashed flat into a pancake and
reinflated, lassoed through golf holes, dynamite can’t be used to blow up the
backboard, and arms don’t stretch like rubber bands for thirty feet. But this
is Looney Tune Land, and so that’s all fine and dandy. After all, if trains can
pummel Yosemite Sam and Wile E. Coyote can fall prey to goodness-knows-what
perils from ACME, then all these Space
Jam quirks are fine. They’re animated, and they know it. Depth perception
doesn’t exist, so all kinds of adventures can happen. (This doesn’t work quite
as well in 3-D Land, unfortunately.) A story usually covers the same welcoming
(because it is well-trodden) plot, and so we learn to recognize these details
and find comfort in their sameness.
The familiar threads of story
material are easily recognizable; the average townspeople need the stranger to
come in and save the day from a force of marauding evil. This stranger has to
face his past and overcome it in order to vanquish the threat. The stakes are
dire. The average townsperson has friends and a lovely lady to back up his
efforts to fight the threat courageously; indeed, all the townspeople exhibit
immense courage and fortitude. In the end, through seemingly impossible odds,
the threat is defeated. Everything goes well from there (that we know of). There.
Now what movie (or book) did I just describe? It could have been nearly any
Clint Eastwood movie, it could’ve been It’s
a Wonderful Life, it could’ve been Pixar, it could’ve been Much Ado About Nothing. In the same way,
a sport of almost any kind is a comforting thing, because there is a fixed set
of expectations and outcomes, with a bewildering amount of variation possible
within those set guidelines. One team will always win, the other will lose. The
basketball will not be kicked, and it will go through the basket. Even though
it’s a movie, and therefore prone to break the rules a little in order to
create more dramatic tension, all that excitement of the movie is enhanced by
knowing the framework the scene of the climatic showdown is staying within.
This
could go on for a while, but I should really wrap this up now so it doesn’t
stretch on for thirty-plus pages (because it totally could). I love Space Jam because it fires the
imagination and acknowledges that anything could happen. Are their
imperfections? Yeah, all those critics have some good points. But they are
forgetting that at the core, the movie has “it.
Whatever ‘it’ is, you’ve got a lot of
it,” Michael tells the Tunes on leaving. I would call this “heart.”
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