A wonderfully constructed marriage of live action and animation, probably the best since Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It's a simple story of the Looney Tunes teaming up with Michael Jordan to stop the oppressive Monstars from enslaving them. The basketball scenes are great, the jokes mostly land, and Bill Murray steals the show whenever he's onscreen. Not to mention the fantastic soundtrack that today is pure standard.

If you're looking for a serious movie, Space Jam isn't your thing. If you want a fun family movie that makes you laugh and cheer on the greatest basketball star of all time, then this is definitely worth your time.

this is a movie for kids so the rewatch as an adult was a little less delightful than the nostalgia of it is. still, it's cute. i will say the number of times that r kelly's i believe i can fly played didn't age well.

also, for 1996 the way that the movie's effects were rendered was really enjoyable! it's nowhere near what cgi does now, but it was never that hard to suspend disbelief about the real characters interacting with cartoons.

one major con—the pacing of the movie is much worse than i remembered. granted, i was 7 when i saw it. but there are a lot of jarring moments where scenes cut out and jokes occur without any lead up or even context.

i watched this ahead of the sequel just for a refresher and i've already read that a major point of contention for the new one is the amount of product placement, but like... first of all, this is what capitalism is, it's the commodification of literally everything and that includes entertainment. but more importantly, i have a feeling there are a lot more applicable products to give advertising rights to in 2020 than there were in 1996? like, they definitely advertised themselves (wb) and namedropped things like nike and gatorade plenty, and the nba got a lot of exposure in terms of non sports fans. i also had the world's cutest space jam chuck taylors as a kid so even if they didn't rely heavily on the product placement in 96 they more than made up for it in merchandising.

**It was a landmark film for young people and children in the 90s, but it is currently forgotten.**

This is one of those movies that almost everyone has seen or heard about… or, at least, everyone who was children or teenager in the 90s, like me. Currently, the film is largely forgotten, and I feel that not even the release of a new film has served to spark interest in it. I don't know if that's entirely fair, because the movie is quite entertaining and works well, providing some nice, enjoyable fun for everyone… even non-basketball fans like me, who've never even seen a game.

The plot is simple: a group of tiny, seemingly unthreatening aliens are willing to do anything to kidnap the Looney Tunes and take them to their planet. Watching them, Bugs Bunny comes up with the idea of ​​challenging them to a basketball game that will decide the toons fate, convinced that everything will be resolved easily. But lo and behold, the aliens steal the talent of top NBA players and turn into monsters, dominating the match. Aware of the situation, Bugs and Daffy Duck decide to bring in Michael Jordan, who had retired to play baseball.

The film was, financially, a safe bet for Warner Bros. We don't just have Looney Tunes, the crazy creatures we've grown used to after decades of cartoons, but also basketball, a particularly popular sport in the US. In addition to Jordan, other famous players of the time will appear in the film, also representing themselves, in addition to their teams, and I have no doubt that the NBA paid a lot of money for all this publicity. And it's not even worth talking about the huge amount of products that come up strategically or that are named in the dialogues, and that also paid for it. Add to the advertising revenue the box office receipts (it was the most successful basketball movie to date) and all the merchandising that was sold afterward, from toys to coasters... and we have an idea of ​​how profitable the movie was for the studio.

Michael Jordan made his cinematic debut here, as it was the first (and, I think, the only) feature film he starred in. He's not an actor, he's not trained as such, but he managed it reasonably well, which shouldn't have been too difficult, as everything was limited to playing himself and making a few passes with the ball. The other players also did a decent job, and seem to be enjoying while parodying themselves. In the dramatic field, it is really Bill Murray who shines, as a professional comic actor, giving us the best performance in the film. There are several competent voice actors here, with Danny De Vito being the most easily identifiable and the one who stands out the most.

Technically, the film deserves an applause for the quality of the animations, and for the positive way in which they play with real characters. It's not a pioneering film, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” did the same several years earlier, and with better results, but what we're given here is good enough. The cinematography is good and the same can be said for the effects. As for the soundtrack, only the song “I Believe I Can Fly” stands out particularly, and this film contributed a lot to popularize it and guarantee it the Grammy Award that year.