I agree that Space Jam is a production So Okay, It's Average. It started out on the wrong foot: Warner Brothers secured basketball legend Michael Jordan to a film contract, then charged the writers to script a movie around him. Also, in 1994, the Walt Disney Company has purchased ABC Television outright, and had bulldozed The Bugs Bunny Show off the air. Warner Brothers were desperate to put the Looney Tunes back in the public eye, and the Nike sneakers commercials that paired Bugs Bunny with Michael Jordan had caught on with audiences. Lastly, Warner Brothers was still jealous of the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit by Touchstone Pictures, which is Disney's sock puppet studio. Thus, it was decided that the Mighty Michael Jordan would appear in a Medium Blending alongside the Looney Tunes. This is how Hollywood thinks.
As improbable as the story is, it does follow a certain logic: aliens come to Earth, challenge Michael Jordan to a basketball game, Jordan gets Bugs Bunny and friends as teammates, and saves the day. But one more thing came along: the whole Mia Hamm / Sheryl Swoopes "Grrl Power" thing happened, and WB decided to add some of that into the already contrived storyline. Hence, the creation of Lola Bunny, an Affirmative Action Girl that wasn't allowed to be flawed, which made her a Mary Sue character. It has also been theorized that Lola Bunny was shoehorned into the mix to contradict the speculation that Bugs Bunny was gay for crossdressing and kissing male characters.
The DVD details just how much Warner Brothers kissed up to Jordan, building him his own gym and filming on his timetable. One more perk for Jordan was appointing Joe Pytka as director, since Joe had directed Jordan in the Nike commercials. In reality, Ivan Reitman the producer was the de facto director, while Pytka was Jordan's personal gofer / flunkie. This fawning likely inspired the writers to include Stan Podolak as an in-joke about Pytka's role in the production.
So, Space Jam had three objectives: 1) wave the mighty Michael Jordan in Disney's face. Check. 2) Put the Looney Tunes back on the screen to keep them commercially viable. Check. 3) Make a Roger Rabbit Effect movie as memorable as Touchstone-Disney's. Oops, not quite. Of course, it fared much, much better than Looney Tunes: Back in Action in theaters. Therefore, yeah, "Average."
I cannot agree with Lola being a Flat Character. I see her as merely a character who didn't get enough screentime to let her personality quirks really shine. From what I got from the movie, I see SpaceJam!Lola as the Voice Of Reason, Only Sane Toon who despite this is still fun-loving and a bit seductive, with her own Berserk Button as well ("Don't call me doll"). I agree though that she was a little too perfect and that the part with her kissing Bugs over something that in a normal Looney Tunes cartoon would be an average "getting over it a few seconds later" injury was pretty stupid.
Frankly I prefer the Space Jam characterization over The Looney Tunes Show one, where they inexplicably turned her into a combination of a Dumb Blonde and The Ditz. Had they tried to maybe mix the two extremes and make her the fun-loving, sexy Voice Of Reason/Only Sane Toon as described above while still giving her a few crazy moments triggered by certain situations, and also fleshed out the former a bit more, THAT would have been great.
Overall, I think the movie is decent, but could have used some reworking to fix up a few things that didn't work. There were definitely way too many Live Action parts focusing on Live Action actors alone, and also that Deus ex Machina at the end with some random guy showing up to fill up the missing space in the team was unnecessary and stupid.
Jesus Christ, so many trope links up there. Personally I find too many links in a paragraph to be distracting, and it means having to click on some of them to see what they mean. And no, I haven't memorised the exact defintions every single bloody trope on here, like most have. Sue me...
Anyway, I saw this movie once... didn't think much of it. I was almost never into Looney Tunes. Tom and Jerry was brilliant, but Looney Tunes just left me cold. Too many characters that didn't interest me, like Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, Sylvester, Marvin the Martian, Porky the Pig, that cowboy guy with the red beard, that weird kangaroo mouse thing, etc. Hell, I never even liked Bugs Bunny. I hated his smug, sassy attitude. I remember liking Taz for some reason as a kid, but now I can't remember why. My favourite characters were Coyote and Road Runner, easily.
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It's...okay.
I remember watching this movie when I was little. Not when it was out, mind you (I was born the same year it was released), but I nevertheless did watch it as a little girl. So, after watching The Looney Tunes Show, I was quite interested in Lola's characterization in this movie, plus I could go for some nostalgia, so I watched it now, around 12 years later.
...my opinion? It's fine. Not So Cool It's Awesome, not So Bad, It's Horrible...no movie I've ever watched has been so in-between as this one. The Roger Rabbit Effect offered well animation and was one part of the movie that wouldn't disappoint anyone who hoped to see it. The characters are looney and basically every Looney Tunes character created make cameos at least once, and the most important ones each get their fair share of screentime.
However, Lola Bunny was one bad thing. She was a boring Flat Character who barely had chemistry with Bugs, yet they smooch lips at the end because "he saved her"...and, if they had hoped for the movie to be better recieved, they shouldn't have left room for any cliché piffle. Not to mention that Bill Murray's appearance was an Ass Pull, and Stan was completely useless. Seriously, why didn't they just leave that guy out?
The only good part about the movie was the basketball game. The rest is junk.
So...meh. It's no film that would ever be a Cult Classic; merely a film to those who watched it when still on toddler legs. But as I've said countless times now; I'm not saying it's bad. It's just not awesome. It's a fat, juicy case of So Okay, It's Average.