My Space Jam 2 Assessment

 I've finally found the time to make this blog post about one of the most overhyped movies of 2021.  A lot has been said about it already since its release back in July.  At this point, there's either nothing left to talk about or lots to talk about.  Either way, I intend to soldier on into this blog post and touch on many things that I noticed and possibly point out some things that others may have missed.  Without further ado: let's go............

The structure of this diatribe will be as follows.  First I'll talk about stuff I liked. Next I'll talk about stuff I was "meh" about. Then I'll cap it all off with the stuff I didn't like one bit.  So, first things first:

What I Liked

The biggest shining star of this movie was Mr. Eric Bauza.  He did a tremendous job providing the voices for a few of the Looney Tunes characters.  He handled Bugs quite well.  

His take on Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian were rather keen as well.  He did some other LT characters too but I'm not entirely sure which ones exactly. Hopefully someone can leave a comment and help out with that.  At any rate, Mr. Bauza gave the characters he voiced enough life and vibrancy that it added so much to the illusion that they were there.  No no no, he was not as good as Mel Blanc. Who can be? Eric himself would definitely admit to being in Mel's glorious shadow.  Nonetheless, he did a good enough job to the point where the Looney Tunes (at least the ones that he voiced) are sure to be capably handled in years to come.

Something else I thought was done rather well was the father/son moment that Lebron had on the court in the middle of the game.  Yes, its what the Yiddish community might call "schmaltz" and it wasn't exactly up to Sophie's Choice level of emotional dialogue.  However, for what it was, I thought it worked out fine.  I like how Lebron realized at that moment what the "real prize" was.  It wasn't about scoring the most points in that basketball game and toppling over Mr Villain (more on him later), it was about regaining a sense of respect from his son Dom.  He even threw the ball away during his heart to heart talk as a way of demonstrating that, which I thought was a nice touch.  Although, I will say that this scene resonated with me more when I thought the kid playing Dom was actually Lebron's son. It turns out it was just some kid with a wooden delivery. This wooden delivery I'd forgive if he was Lebron's actual flesh and blood.  But, since he's not, this scene is diminished that much more in my eyes.  Oh well, I still count it as one of the highlights.

MEH

One thing I was "meh" about was Don Cheadle's performance as the villain Al G Rhythm.  I've seen lots of people just rake Don's performance over the coals calling it everything from "cringe" to "very terrible".  I do see their point.  Although, the biggest fault is with the character being paper thin, one dimensional and not thought through very well (more on that later too).  Don Cheadle could only work with what he was given.  In my opinion, he managed to give that one dimensional character another half dimension at least with his performance.  This performance for Don was like an experienced plumber, someone who has "served the community for 30 years", fixing that leaky pipe in your kitchen.  It's a very simple job and he gets it done well, but it's not something

he'll use as a referral after he's done.  This villainous Al G Rhythm character was your basic "lust for power" kind of a character.  When he went into his "soon I will rule over everyone" performance, he sounded like he meant it.  I also enjoyed him in scenes with him trying to manipulate Dom in helping him with his schemes.  He used the "your father doesn't understand you....................................... but I do" routine in such a way that it was easy to believe how Dom could be suckered into any of that.  It's such a simple kind of villain that's been used in many many films since forever and I'd say Don Cheadle completed his task rather well.

I saw lots of "scratching their heads" kind of comments online and elsewhere about the use of ALLLLLLLLLLLL of those WB properties put into the crowd around that basketball arena.  Some decried it as the ultimate symbol of being a corporate sell out and whatnot.  Granted, I'm sure including all of these properties was much more a corporate decision rather than a creative decision.  However, what a movie's director creatively does with a corporate decision is what makes or breaks it.  Was this the best use of this overwhelming multitude of characters? Maybe not. I might have done other things with them.  But, all in all, this isn't great or terrible.  It's just fine.

I might catch a bit of hell for this, but I personally was rather ambivalent with what was done with Lola Bunny.  They're attempt to "desexualize" her with a new look didn't faze me as much as it did others.  I'm thinking maybe that's because I was already a grownup when the first Space Jam hit so I could see what Lola was already at the time.  She's an "outrageous paradigm" who knows how to "get bizzay" consistently and thoroughly.  She's 1/2 Joe Camel and a 1/3 Fonzarellie and I'm pretty sure she's also a "kung fu hippie from gangsta city".  

The reason she exists at all is because of WB executives acting on various cries of "...Looney Tunes is a boys club, give them a girl with girl power..."  So, to anyone lamenting about Lola's seemingly needless mastectomy as "kowtowing to political correctness", um....... political correctness created her in the first place.  She was pretty much assembled and brought to life in a PC laboratory by a small twisted quack of a scientist named Dr. Frankenwoke.  So this new capitulation to rad fem demands is just more of the same for her character really.  Yes, yes, yes!  I can understand the revulsion against caving in to a mob, woke or otherwise.  But, in my opinion, this is not a good hill to die on.

Or......... should I say............. HILLS to die on?

Besides the oversized crowd of WB properties, one other thing that most people found intolerable cringe that I merely found just "meh" is Porky Pig rapping.

Sure, this sequence pretty much desecrates everything involved with it namely Porky Pig, basketball, cinema, and rap music itself.  I'm sure the original "Furious 5" saw this sequence and thought "all of our pioneering techniques with beats and turntables in the underground clubs lead to THIS??!!"  But, you know what, I didn't feel the cringe at this part nearly as hard as other people.  For the kind of story this movie has (stay tuned), adding this sequence is like painting the fat Elvis into that dogs playing poker picture.  And really, having the Looney Tunes involved with this movie AND this sequence is like painting the fat Elvis AND the dogs playing poker into the Mona Lisa.   I certainly don't love this part of the movie, but when compared to many other aspects, I consider this part just a tacky distraction that's not worth the energy to care about it.  With that in mind, this brings me to........

Stuff I Hated

Legend has it that when the first Space Jam movie was made, animation veteran Chuck Jones was brought in to make a speech about this movie's place in the Looney Tunes' legacy.  Since Mr. Jones was someone who had worked with many of the main Looney Tunes stars (those being Porky, Daffy, Elmer, and Bugs) and created some Looney Tunes characters that became a big part of the canon (such as Roadrunner, Wile E Coyote, Pepe Le Pew, and Marvin the Martian), he would be the perfect person to give this movie a big sendoff with a speech.  Naturally, everyone who worked on it expected Jones to give a nice glowing and complimentary speech about "doing the Looney Tunes good".  To their shock and disappointment, his speech was the polar opposite of that.  I believe some of the exact words he used were, "...this is a desecration of the Looney Tunes' legacy..."  Immediately after his speech was done, WB had thee Chuck Jones promptly escorted off the lot.  These two parties certainly were not getting along at this point.  Sadly, Chuck Jones has passed away since that time.  Had he been alive to have seen this latest edition of Space Jam, I'm thinking that his reaction would be more like this:

So, yeah, what I hated about this movie was pretty much EVERYTHING ELSE!!!  

One of the biggest flaws of this movie is pretty much the entire story.  The nonsensical narrative has more plot holes than the entire 5 seasons of Gilligan's Island so this blog post would become much more lengthy than it is already if I were to go on about all of them.  Besides, I've seen many many articles and youtube videos that go over several of those plot holes already so there's no need to repeat them here.  Although, while watching it with my family, my own daughter pointed out one big flaw that not I nor anyone else seem to have noticed.  During the basketball game, my daughter asked, "why is the crowd cheering for both the good guys AND the bad guys?"  Y'know what?  I didn't have an answer for that.  But she's right.  The villain Mr. Rhythm threatened that if he won the game then everyone in the crowd would be trapped with him forever so there was plenty of incentive for them to cheer exclusively for LeBron and the Looney Tunes.  But, whenever either side made a basket and scored any number of points, the crowd cheered as loud as they could.  Why is that?

The best I can do to answer that is to sum up the story by comparing it to Dom's game.  In the movie, LeBron's son Dom is a budding game developer who created his own video game.  It's basically the game of basketball with some additions of his own.  In his game, if a player does let's say 100 flips in the air before slam dunking a ball, in a regular game, that would still only get 2 points.  But, in Dom's game, such a display would give out "style points" as a bonus which could be up to 1000s of points.  It looks like that's how the writers approached this screenplay.  Every element they added didn't have to make sense or advance any plots or characters.  It just had to dazzle the audience enough to make those that shut their brains off beforehand go "ooh" and "aah".  That would certainly explain the Porky rap scene I mentioned before anyway.

But, of course, the writers didn't mean to make the script this way.  No writing team does.  Scripts just end up that way for various reasons and various problems that arise within the writing process.  Keep in mind that this production had changed directors part way through.  From what I saw, it looks to me like the first director was working on making the movie Looney Tunes centric but then the replacement director changed things to make it more Lebron James centric.  So, in the process of making that shift, so many elements from the Looney Tunes' storylines had to be cut or downplayed in favour of LeBron's situation.  That's one thing that could be making the whole story so disjointed.

As a for instance to show you what I mean, I give you Al G's diabolical plans for the Looney Tunes after he's won the big game.  He just off the cuff says that they'll be deleted, for no other reason than because he thinks they're "irrelevant" and because he can.  Bugs, Daffy, Porky, etc don't seem like a huge threat to Al G so the stakes don't seem that high with them.  Sure, them being deleted is certainly high stakes for them but it seems like they wouldn't be much interference of Al G's plan if they stayed around.  This story would've been more engaging if the Looney Tunes were more of a thorn in the villain's side thus making his desire to delete them that much stronger.  How cool would it be for all of Al G's grandiose world domination plans to be blocked by a small yellow bird with a baby voice?

Really though, pretty much every single problem with story or plot or character that either has been pointed out or has yet to be pointed out seems to stem from one major problem: too many people in the current WB animation staff (mostly the 2nd director of this flick as well as countless executives) know almost NOTHING about the Looney Tunes and/or what to do with them.  That's where so many of the story's inconsistencies and imbalances come from.  Sure, a few of the writers and artists on staff managed to slip in a few moments here and there that had a flash of Looney Tunes vigour, but other than that the characters seemed just oddly placed within a narrative that was supposed to heavily involve them.  One of the biggest errors in judgment in that regard is how Bugs Bunny's goal here is to "...get the family back together..."  The Looney Tunes do not operate as a family unit.  

They're not an ensemble like The Muppets or The Mary Tyler Moore Show or any show like that.  For the most part, each character exists in their own universe with their own unique set of guidelines of what they do and what they don't do.  Yes, some have interacted together in various cartoons from the classic era, but only when the writers and directors of that day (writers like Mike Maltese, Warren Foster, Tedd Pierce as well as directors like Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, Bob McKimson etc) felt it creatively expedient to do so.  If two characters didn't play off each other well enough then they just wouldn't be together.  So, to just put all of the characters together in one big group does not create "maximum looniness" it just makes a chaotic mess that kind of cancels itself out as being a lot of noise accomplishing nothing.  The evidence of this is most apparent near the end where it looks like Bugs Bunny "might be dying" and everyone on the Tune Squad is gathered around him.

All of the characters are hanging their heads in sorrow at the thought of Bugs passing.  Including.....

...this guy!

Yeah, they have Yosemite Sam being sad about Bugs' possible death.  The same Yosemite Sam who on their first meeting tried to shove Bugs off of a moving train so that he'd fall into a canyon onto the "jagged rocks below".  The same Yosemite Sam that forced Bugs at gun point to jump off of the highest diving board with no concern for his or anyone else's safety.  The very same Yosemite Sam that tried to cook and eat Bugs while on a deserted island simply because he was sick of eating coconuts.  THAT Yosemite Sam is now concerned about Bugs' welfare.  Really?!  Talk about getting a character wrong.

However, it's not just the use of the super-saccharine element of the Looney Tunes being this "loving family" to the point of Bugs Bunny gushing about it on his "death bed" that's so egregious.  Heck, that itself would be almost halfway tolerable if not for one thing..................... yes I'm going there........................ a family member is missing!!!

Pepe Le Pew is not there even though he should be.  If we're speaking in terms of "keeping the family together" then Mr. Le Pew has more than earned his place as a noted member of that Looney Tunes family.  

He's won an Academy Award for the WB studio.  He's made a cameo appearance interacting with Sylvester in a cartoon.  He's always been a part of that marching line up behind Bugs & Daffy dancing for every incarnation of The Bugs Bunny Show in prime time and Saturday morning.  He's been on much of the Looney Tunes merchandise.  He's even had as big an influence on the culture as any other Looney Tune in the canon, one such example is Johnny Depp adding an element of Pepe Le Pew's mannerisms into his Jack Sparrow character.  He's a part of the legacy, he's part of the canon, he's a part of the family.  The director may have said in an interview "...we couldn't find time to put Pepe Le Pew in...." well, if they were going with the big family trope then they should have made time for family.

No no no! We can't put Pepe Le Pew in this movie because his schtick has problematic elements that...

Oh hey! Look who it is! It's one of the Censor Monkeys weighing in.  You little shits seem to be everywhere these days.  Thanks for ruining the culture and the planet, jerks!!

Hey! We are RESCUING the culture by getting rid of all the misogyny and rape culture that Pepe Le Pew brings so that little boys don't learn how to rape and so wxmyn can feel safe...

There is no proof and no connection to Pepe Le Pew leading to an increase in rapes. Hell, there's no proof of ANY cultural work leading to an increase in ANY crime.  The only reason some people feel "unsafe" watching a show and the only reason you feel the need to butt in and screech about things is simply due to your delusional paranoid projection onto cultural works based solely on a misunderstanding of context as well as a highly delicate mental and physiological constitution...

NO NO NO! PEPE IS BAD AND HE HAS TO GO!  HE CAUSES RAPE!  EVERYONE WHO LIKES PEPE LE PEW SHOULD BE ARRESTED AND...

AW! SHUT UP!!!

Geez! That was unpleasant.  But of course, Censor Monkeys are very unpleasant people.  I'm so sorry you had to see that.

Well, hey, the suppression of Pepe Le Pew in WB products is certainly nothing new.

In the first Space Jam, all Pepe did was just be a stinky skunk.  The only time he ever did anything remotely "affectionate" was that one scene where he kissed Granny.  The rest of the time he was just there to stink.  Penelope the cat was there in the stands the whole time and Pepe didn't even look at her let alone chase her.

And then in Looney Tunes Back in Action, Pepe just had one short scene where all he did was play a stinky gendarme.  Well, that's the only scene that made it into the movie anyway.

The end credits is littered with animation line tests of the Looney Tunes characters from various scenes from the film.  Pretty much every line test is a distinctive action from a very recognizable scene, except one.  At one point we see some line work of Pepe Le Pew accosting Penelope.  It's the usual schtick except Pepe is wearing glasses while they're both wearing a suit and tie.  So, just like in Space Jam 2, there's a Pepe scene that was cut from the movie either for time or for being "too much".  Either way, I'm hoping the footage from that scene still exists somewhere.

One very weird part of the whole Le Pew controversy is that there are a percentage of people who would prefer to have "le skunk" stay around but only if his schtick changed somehow.

"How about Pepe Le Pew shares his pie with Penelope, then they BOTH have pie."

"It's different.  I'll give you that."

Yeah no.  Bad idea.  Don't "fix" something that's not broken.

Well, I am thankful for one thing.  I'm glad Speedy Gonzales managed to be in this movie.  Besides Pepe Le Pew, this was the other Looney Tunes character that the New York Slimes writer Charles Blow had on his "kick the bucket list" of cartoons he'd like to have disappear.  But, fortunately, Speedy has plenty of fans both in the Latino communities and among Looney Tunes (both casual and fanatical) in general that he's managed to stick around.  Here's hoping the same adulation can re-elevate Pepe real soon.

Well, that's my all encompassing assessment of Space Jam 2.  Looking at many of the reactions I've seen, I'd say that most viewers agree with me in giving this a negative review.  While this movie did manage to razzle dazzle the small children that accompanied their parents to this $12 afternoon killer, most everyone else walked away disappointed and underwhelmed by it all.  Warner Bros will have to make it up to the Looney Tunes, their fans, and audiences in general moving forward after unleashing this scattered debris of a movie on everyone.  Will the WB studio be able to pull that off?  What does this mean for the Looney Tunes going forward?  Well, as Bugs said at the end....

"...I can survive anything..."

Bugs, for your sake, and the sake of the every other LT character, I hope you're right.

Odor of the Day and mini-controversies

 

Back in May, I did some commentary on two cartoons with Anthony Kotorac. Sadly, the videos links in that post of mine no longer work because Anthony had some trouble with the Warner Bros legal team over copyright issues and so had to take that particular video down. He's also had to reformat every one of his videos in order to keep his channel going. Thankfully, he's managed to do that and so he's back up and running.  Here's hoping his channel and his dedication gives him all the admiration he deserves.

That video embedded at the top is the most recent commentary I did on that channel.  As you can see, it's for a cartoon called Odor of the Day.  I put forth the notion that the skunk in that cartoon is NOT Pepe Le Pew even though it quite often is listed as such.  Ever since this cartoon was put onto a Le Pew VHS set back in the 1980's it always puzzled me as to why it was included.  The skunk didn't seem to be Pepe Le Pew at all to me.  However, on that same cassette is a cartoon about a squirrel and a coconut called Much Ado About Nutting which had nothing to do with Pepe even remotely.  But, of course, that one was just added to break up what to some might seem like a monotony of just Pepe's cartoons.  So that's what I chalked up the inclusion of Odor of the Day to be as well, just a one off added for variety.

However, as time went on, I noticed that this cartoon was being put within Le Pew's filmography quite often.  Whether it was a casual mention on an internet message board or some dvd release or TV broadcast, it was always categorized as a Pepe cartoon.  That raised my eyebrow every time.  But, of course, I always kept it floating at the back of my mind because I always had more immediate situations in my life to worry about, still do.  Then, the aforementioned Mr. Kotorac came along with his commentary channel, so I decided to use this opportunity to air that minor grievance and see what happens. I'll also use this blog post to further elaborate on my position because that video could only be so long. Here we go:

As mentioned in the video, one big BIG difference between this skunk and Pepe Le Pew is that...

...this skunk knows full well that he stinks and even wields that stinky tail of his like a weapon.

Not only that, when the dog catches a cold with a stuffy nose, he can no longer smell that odorous tail. The skunk's reaction to that development is devastation.  That's not like Pepe Le Pew at all.

A big part of Pepe's schtick is for his odor to linger over people and be completely oblivious to its effects.  That, plus the lack of any love interest, is too big a departure to simply be "director Art Davis' own take on the Pepe character".

This leads me to another point that I didn't find a chance to make in that commentary: I don't think Chuck Jones would've allowed such a deviation from one of his characters.  He was very adamantly protective of everything he created. He kept tabs on how they looked, how they acted, and how they felt.  One big example I can give is in the 1990's when the WB Network used Michigan J Frog in all of their commercials for it.  Chuck hated that with a passion. He said that Michigan's character is to only sing for whoever discovers him, just like that construction worker in One Froggy Evening did.  For that worker, Michigan never stops singing but for everyone else, he just flops down and acts like a regular frog.  So, for the WB to make Mr J Frog sing for all of America was violation of his character that Chuck couldn't stand.  With that in mind, I doubt that if Art Davis had approached Chuck and said, "Hey, I'd like to use your skunk character in a cartoon of mine. However, he won't be French and he won't fall in love with

any girls that look like skunks. Instead he will compete for shelter with a dog and even deliberately attack him with the stink from his tail" that Chuck would be fine with that.  I think Chuck would've, at the very least, exploded onto Art for even suggesting such a change.  Chuck Jones wrote not one but two autobiographies. You'd think at least in either one of those there'd be some rant about Mr. Davis sullying his Pepe character.  So, since there is no such rant in those books and I haven't heard of any such rant anywhere else, this leads me to fully conclude that the skunk in Odor of the Day is not Pepe Le Pew at all.  Really, if Art Davis had wanted to change Pepe so drastically for this cartoon, why wouldn't he just use a whole other character?  That seems to make the most sense to me.

There has been some reaction to the video so far. The responses on both Youtube and Facebook have been mixed for, against, or 'starting to lean towards but not quite all the way towards' my argument.  Such as:

This guy on Facebook agrees that this is not Pepe. So, point for me I guess.

This Facebook person says "100% Pepe" and makes a point thusly.  I can see the point he makes but I think he might've glossed over some stuff, but that's for a whole other post at a whole other time.

I grabbed both of these Facebook comments at the same time because they were exact opposites right next to each other.  One says "no" while the other says "yes".  Who knew this cartoon could be so divisive.

Over on Youtube, things are a little more nuanced.  This guy gives a rather lengthy paragraph basically saying "maybe".  But, he does raise the point that there are more questions than answers when it comes to this cartoon's origin.

This Youtuber says "yes" to this being Pepe and sites animation historian Jerry Beck as a source.  Yes, Mr. Beck is indeed a tremendous source of animation information as well as being a lovely approachable person.  I met him in person once in Ottawa about 11 years ago.  He's a tiny little leprechaun of a man but inside the mind of this pseudo-gaelic gnome is a guy who's as nice and as knowledgable as I mentioned before.

However, he is still a mortal human and thus subject to err and/or make a too quick leap to judgement.  He has certainly declared Odor of the Day as a bonefide Pepe Le Pew cartoon, but I'd like to know on what grounds he bases that opinion.  Is it just in his own opinion or is there an unpublished or unreleased interview with the now late Art Davis that would fill in this puzzle piece?  What does he know?  Either way, this would certainly be a topic for discussion that I'd like to have with him someday.

Actually, speaking of Jerry, on the topic of this very cartoon I've noticed that some opinions from historians are also mixed. For instance, in this book...

...A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons, in the listing for Odor of the Day it does have Pepe Le Pew as one of the characters.

However, the same can't be said for Steve Schneider's book That's All Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation.

There's a complete filmography in the very back of this book.  In there, Odor of the Day is simply listed as what's called a "one shot".

So, who's correct, Jerry or Steve?  This may be a trivial question to some, but such questions are always worth discussing to any historian.  Just as other scholarly historians may speculate and postulate on what started the fire at the Library of Alexandria, so too do animation historians stop to ponder the origin and the storyboard pitch as well as any other back room happenings that may have lead to the creation of this cartoon.  Keep searching for the truth, my friends.

More Daddy/Daughter Pumpkin Carving

 It's almost Halloween again. So, for the 3rd year in a row, my daughter Raianne and I have carved pumpkins of our own design. This year I thought I'd spice things up with a little theme or motif if you will.  What I decided on was to have one pumpkin murdering the other. So that's what you are seeing above. I designed the victim pumpkin while Raianne designed the killer pumpkin. I think they both came out fairly well.

I'm very impressed with how quickly my daughter has learned the entire process of carving a pumpkin. I guess she's always been a fast learner. Either way, I can't wait to see what kind of pumpkin she will design next year. In these uncertain covid times, her pumpkin is at least one great thing to look forward to.

Here's what they look like with the lights off by the way:

Whoa! spooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooky! Happy Halloween, everyone!