Space Jam (1996) on Netflix
PG19961h 28mAdventureAnimationComedy
Mr. Swackhammer sends his Nerdlucks to capture the Looney Tunes for his failing space amusement park. The Tunes bet their freedom on a basketball game and pull Michael Jordan in to help.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.5/10231,892 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes44%
Trailer
Plot summary
After winning the third championship with the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan announces his retirement from basketball and declares his intention to play baseball. Meanwhile, deep in space, on another planet called Moron Mountain an outer space theme park, Mr. Swackhammer sends five tiny aliens known as the Nerdlucks to go to Looney Tune Land and capture all the Looney Tune characters and take them to Moron Mountain. But the Looney Tunes thinks of a plan to find a way to escape slavery on Moron Mountain. And Bugs Bunny decided to defend themselves by challenging the Nerdlucks to a basketball game. Then the Nerdlucks uses their strange powers to steal the talent of five NBA stars such as Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Muggsy Bogues, Larry Johnson, and Shawn Bradley which they'll ultimately transform themselves into the tallest and muscular Monstars. It's up to Michael Jordan to help the Looney Tunes play a basketball game vs. the Monstars. But if the Monstars win, then Swackhammer gets the Looney Tunes, and along with Jordan to Moron Mountain!
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Space Jam (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Pytka was fired two months after a shouting match with Dave Spafford, who had warned him the chroma-keying would erase Jordan whenever a player stepped in front of him; Tippe replaced Pytka, and Warner Bros. asked Spafford back to fix a scene that was “totally unusable.”
- Ivan Reitman phoned Robert Zemeckis for advice on making a film like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the answer was blunt: “Don't do it, it nearly killed me.”
- Veteran Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones, critical of the film's premise, left a screening on the Warner Bros. lot and was later forcefully escorted off the lot by security after sharing his opinions instead of giving the congratulatory speech he had been asked for.
- The film broke the record for composited shots in a feature, roughly 1,043, and for FX shots, around 1,100 in a single 90-minute film; Independence Day, released the same year, had 700 in two hours of screen time.
- Before Wayne Knight was cast as Stan, the first choices were Michael J. Fox and Chevy Chase, both rejected by Warner Bros.; Jason Alexander turned the part down, and Nathan Lane said Pytka rejected him because he appeared “too gay.”
- Danny DeVito ended up the film's only celebrity voice actor, as Mr. Swackhammer, a part originally planned for Jack Palance; Swackhammer was to have been live-action until the final days of development, with Dennis Hopper possibly playing him because of his friendship with Pytka.
- Jordan had been offered movie deals before, but his manager, David Falk, turned them all down because he felt the basketball icon could only act as himself.
