Plot
A group of criminal aliens called the The Nerdlucks, led by their boss, Mister Swackhammer (Danny DeVito), plot to capture the Looney Tunes characters and make them their newest attractions in order to save their failing amusement park called Moron Mountain from foreclosure and bring in more customers. Seeing how short the aliens are, the Looney Tunes bargain for the freedom by challenging the Nerdlucks to a basketball game. Preparing to cheat in the game, the Nerdlucks return to Earth and steal the basketball talents of Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, Charles Barkley, Muggsy Bogues and Shawn Bradley. The Nerdlucks use their stolen talent to become the "Monstars" (or "Mean Team"), gigantic creatures that the Looney Tunes are unable to defeat. To help them win, the characters recruit Michael Jordan, who reluctantly agrees after the Monstars squash him into the shape of a basketball and bounce him around like one.
In the beginning of the game between the TuneSquad and the Monstars, the Looney Tunes are injured one by one until only Jordan, Bugs, Lola and Daffy are left in the game, leaving them short one player. Marvin The Martian, who is the referee tells them that if there is no fifth player, the team will forfeit the game. At the last second, Bill Murray appears in the stadium and joins the team, narrowly averting forfeiture. Meanwhile, Jordan reluctantly makes a deal with Mister Swackhammer to spare the Looney Tunes in exchange for his own freedom as his newest attraction if the TuneSquad loses. He readily accepts it and Bugs tries to talk him out of it, apparently aware what it means for Jordan being subjected to humiliation on Moron Mountain for all time.
At the game's climax, the TuneSquad are down by one, and it is up to Jordan to score the winning point. Extending his arm with the power of toon physics, Jordan makes the basket and wins the game. He convinces the Monstars that they're bigger than Mister Swackhammer, who yells at them for losing. Fed up with their boss, the Monstars tie him up and send him to the moon. At Jordan's request, they give back the stolen basketball talents from the other players by transferring them to a basketball. This reverts the Monstars back to the tiny Nerdlucks. Refusing to return to Moron Mountain to endure humiliation from their former boss, the Nerdlucks decide to stay with the Looney Tunes who only agree to let them if they can prove to be "looney". Afterwards, Jordan is returned back to Earth in the Nerdlucks' spaceship, where he makes a dramatic and appearance at the baseball game to the cheers of the audience, despite being late. The next day, Michael gives the stolen talent back to the other NBA players. He is later prompted by his rivals to return to the NBA, mirroring his real-life comeback.
Read more about this topic: Space Jam
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)