Everybody get up, it's time to slam now

November 16, 2016 6:52 AM

It was twenty years ago today
Michael Jordan taught the toons to play
They've never gone out of style
Even though we thought we’d wait a while
So may I introduce to you
The act you've known for all these years
Bugs et cetera vs. the Monstars again
posted by Etrigan (27 comments total)

Obligatory: http://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm
posted by fraxil at 7:01 AM on November 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

I saw a guy playing at an open mic a few months ago and he started telling a story about visiting his brother in Hawaii and they spent the whole time watching Space Jam and then he explained what Space Jam is because it is a movie older than he is, and they were watching it like it was Parts The Clonus Horror or something instead of a dumb thing from just a few years ago

I'm upset
posted by beerperson at 7:13 AM on November 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't get the nostalgia for Space Jam at _all_. I mean, I remember seeing it in theaters as a kid, and kinda liking it in the way that a twelve-year old kid would kinda like anything involving Looney Toons, but I've had zero desire to see it again. I feel like maybe everyone saw a different Space Jam than I did.
posted by SansPoint at 7:22 AM on November 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Space Jam is a terrible movie, let's be clear, but I'm still listening to Hit 'Em High right now.

Also, let's talk about how terrible the composition of the Monstars is. A point guard, two power forwards and two centers? Sure, Barkley's versatile, but you're presumably putting him at the 2 with Larry Johnson playing at the 3.?It's madness.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:28 AM on November 16, 2016 [7 favorites]

Also, let's talk about how terrible the composition of the Monstars is. A point guard, two power forwards and two centers?

Blanko, the Shawn Bradley Monstar, failed to register a single stat throughout the course of the game. Even in a world where Elmer Fudd has a 40-inch vertical, Bradley's "talent" can't muster even a shot attempt. This is the most realistic aspect of the movie.
posted by Etrigan at 7:31 AM on November 16, 2016 [9 favorites]

Space Jam promoted perhaps what I feel is the Best Comment Ever on the Internet. ( Which may say more about me than anything else)
posted by mikelieman at 7:31 AM on November 16, 2016

I answered a question about Wile E. Coyote's business card ("Wile E. Coyote, Genius") and I think I found the trailhead for the Space Jam ARG.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:32 AM on November 16, 2016

For all my fellow Dark Souls fans
posted by mysticreferee at 7:35 AM on November 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't get the nostalgia for Space Jam at _all_.

Nobody has any nostalgia for the actual movie, just the one song.
posted by dilaudid at 7:38 AM on November 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

LBR, Space Jam and Kazaam are the masterpieces of the 1990s
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:44 AM on November 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

I enjoy teasing my comics friends with the fact Jean Giraud (Moebius) worked on Space Jam. But I mean, hey, we all gotta eat.
posted by darksong at 7:51 AM on November 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

Space Jam and Kazaam

I still remember downloading mp3s over dialup on Space Ja.
posted by beerperson at 8:05 AM on November 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

dilaudid Nobody has any nostalgia for the actual movie, just the one song.

The only song I remember is "I Believe I Can Fly" and if I have to hear that one again, I might just consider deafness. For the love of god, they made us sing it at my Middle School graduation. (I lip-synced, because fuck that shit.)
posted by SansPoint at 8:12 AM on November 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have never seen Space Jam and for some reason I feel slightly sad of that fact...it's like I'm missing out on some serious nostalgia.

I don't really like Looney Toons though, so I doubt I'll enjoy it anyway
posted by littlesq at 8:25 AM on November 16, 2016

I enjoy teasing my comics friends with the fact Jean Giraud (Moebius) worked on Space Jam. But I mean, hey, we all gotta eat.

Well holy shit.

I need a moment.
posted by louche mustachio at 8:48 AM on November 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Cartoon Brew's oral history of Space Jam
posted by cottoncandybeard at 8:51 AM on November 16, 2016

I think the nostalgia for Space Jam is more than the movie itself, but the overall hype surrounding the NBA that 96-97 season, which was the season after the Bulls set the 72-10 record (which was only beaten recently by one of their big players' teams, Steve Kerr's Golden State Warriors). I was 7, loved Looney Tunes, and was caught up in basketball fever despite not knowing anything about basketball.
posted by gucci mane at 10:59 AM on November 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

gucci mane Maybe that's it, 'cause even among sports, which I had terribly little interest in, I had even less interest in basketball. My sports memories around then are the Flyers in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the Phillies shitting the bed as usual.
posted by SansPoint at 11:05 AM on November 16, 2016

Space Jam is a terrible movie, let's be clear, but I'm still listening to Hit 'Em High yt right now.

If you're going to link to the video, you gotta link to the official video, in glorious mid-90s music video black and white, complete with radio-safe rappers getting all gangsta while rapping about animated characters and inappropriate (for a kids movie) close-up booty shaking.
LL even makes it rain. Sort of.
posted by madajb at 11:22 AM on November 16, 2016

I don't really like Looney Toons though

BLASPHEMY!!

Unless you're talking about the stuff that was made after the early 60's, then yeah, me too.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:37 PM on November 16, 2016

I watched this a couple years ago for the first time due to my wife's disbelief that I'd never seen it, and my main takeaways were:
• Wait, "I Believe I Can Fly" is from this movie?
• "Nobody told me Dan Aykroyd was in this movie!" was a legitimately good line
• Every other part of the movie was awful
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:06 PM on November 16, 2016

"Ya Buggin'" came on the Sirius XM kids station a few times a few weekends ago, and I disliked it quite a bit less than I expected I would.
posted by Gimpson at 3:44 PM on November 16, 2016

THe following part of this article about the Space Jam website just plain made me mad. Never mind what this guy says, corporations can never be trusted with preserving digital history because they exist solely to make money. This is why I'm glad the Internet Archive's Jason Scott is one of the internet's most prolific pirates.

Warner Bros. has always demonstrated a great reluctance to publicly discuss the Space Jam site – a source inside the studio declined to supply any current traffic stats, citing "proprietary information" – but Tritter and Stachler were both still working at the studio when the site blew up. Tritter was senior vice president of interactive marketing, while Stachler (who returned in 1998 after graduating) was his VP. Both had relocated to Los Angeles in Buckley's stead, but the sight of that old galaxy-inspired homepage brought back memories of long days and late nights at the old Midtown office.

People inside Warners were surprised and mostly delighted, they recall, but at least one executive figured the best way to address an unwanted site that had quickly racked up, by one estimate, 500,000 page views was to shut it down. Solely because it was not a monetized asset, to use the sterile parlance of studio bean counters, the Space Jam website was dead for at least a few hours, perhaps longer.

An incensed Tritter called the person responsible and implored him to flip the site back on. "Some idiot thought, 'Well, that's not supposed to be there anymore and there's all this traffic coming in,'" he recalls. "Andrew and I are like, 'What's wrong with you? Why would you?'" Soon enough, the site was restored, but Tritter still thinks about that very sudden death every time he sees the site. "Is someone at some point going to say, 'Oh, I guess we should take it down now, and that'll be it?" he wonders.

Stachler is more direct: "If we had left the company, the site probably would not exist today. It would've gone down for good at that time."
posted by BiggerJ at 6:49 PM on November 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

The only song I remember is "I Believe I Can Fly"

You should go visit /r/comeonandslam/.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:55 PM on November 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was in my (ulp!) 20s when Space Jam came out. I was too cool for school at that point so obviously this was not made for me. But I did watch it at the time as my nieces, under 10, loved the hell out of it. I never understood why. Like the Space Jam toys that I still find to this day at second-hand stores everything about it is poorly constructed & crass. Maybe there's something intensely powerful about the pop culture we consume as children - I love the Black Cauldron, Krull and the Black Hole without qualification but if challenged it would be hard for me to defend these things as empirically good cinema (if such a thing exists). When we are kids maybe its that our aesthetic filters haven't full formed, our cultural boundaries are permeable and we are more willing to appreciate the spirit or appearance of the thing then the actual thing? I don't know but Space Jam's longevity always amazes me.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:14 AM on November 17, 2016

Remember, Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars.

I am sad because this is probably the last time I will ever have cause to link to a Roger Ebert movie review.
posted by JHarris at 1:43 PM on November 17, 2016

JoeZydeco: "You should go visit /r/comeonandslam/."

Well subscribed and busy; that's kind of amazing.
posted by Mitheral at 6:55 PM on November 17, 2016