Space Jam

As a cynical exercise in franchise exploitation this live-action/animated feature takes some beating; as a film, its target audience appears to be child fans of the cartoon characters' live-action co-star, basketball player Michael Jordan. Realising he doesn't get a penny from the spin-off toys owned by Jordan's kids, Bugs Bunny considers getting a better agent. To revive his ailing Moron Mountain theme park, Swackhammer dispatches his minions, the Nerdlucks, to Looney Tunes Land, to kidnap Bugs, Daffy Duck, Wile E Coyote, et al. To save their skins, the Looney Tunes challenge their would-be abductors to a game of basketball, whereupon the Nerdlucks transform themselves into their fearsome alter egos, the Monstars, before siphoning off the ball-playing skills from a bunch of NBA stars. To even up the odds, Bugs and Co kidnap Jordan and beg him to lick them into shape for the big game. The set plays are transparently simple, the execution sloppy and the ending signposted days in advance. Visually, it's a mess: the attempts to blend 2- and 3-D animation with live-action and computer-generated images produce scenes that are fuzzier than the storyline.