WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: In a world where Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny really could come knocking at your door, nearly anything can happen. WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT is a rather dull mystery plot set on a really great background where cartoon characters rub shoulders with living humans. Technical credits and inspiration of having the favorite cartoon characters of the 1940s come together in one film make the plot inadequacies seem unimportant. Rating: +2.
Back in the three or four years after the Second World War, two different sorts of films were reaching their heyday. One was the hard- boiled detective film, which made a tentative start before the war with a few films like THE MALTESE FALCON, had dried up a little during the war years, then really hit its stride with films like MURDER, MY SWEET; THE BIG SLEEP; and LADY IN THE LAKE. At the same time, Chuck Jones' cartoon characters began taking on the shapes and styles familiar to modern viewers. But no two styles of film could be much further apart than the film noir detective story and the cartoon form. At least that was the case until Gary Wolf wrote the mystery novel WHO CENSORED ROGER RABBIT? Wolf set his story in those post-war years but took out the blacks that Raymond Chandler's detective called "shines" and replaced them with "toons," the characters of cartoons. In this world cartoons are just live-action films in which all the actors are toons. Adjoining Los Angeles is the ghetto where all the toon actors live, a place called Toontwon. Against this background the film WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT takes place.
And the background is what is important in this film. In the foreground is a sort of prosaic mystery story in which tough-guy (humor) detective Eddie Valiant (valiantly played by Bob Hoskins) is looking for the real killer in a murder case in which the police strongly suspect famous cartoon star Roger Rabbit. Valiant (at least initially) thinks Roger is innocent, but he is not so sure about Roger's buxom wife Jessica Rabbit. (Don't let the name fool you; she is a very human-looking toon.) The mystery story is not a very good one and its resolution is disappointingly bad, but it is unlikely that that will disappoint much of the audience. What may resonate a little is the statement against bigotry against toons or humans. The technical effect of mixing live action and cartoon will definitely dazzle most audiences. The integration of live action and cartoon, reputed to be flawless, is at least technically very, very good. Just occasionally we find Bob Hoskins looking a little too high as he talks to Roger. The animators had, after the fact, placed the top of Roger's head rather than Roger's eyes in Hoskins' line of vision. But that quibble aside, this film goes many orders of magnitude beyond any previous such mixing. The cartoon characters in the real world have a three-dimensional quality, resulting from careful use of shadow--no explanation why they do not have shadowing when they appear in cartoons.
Among the interesting touches are the attempts to make toons work consistently in the real world. Clearly the laws of physics do not work the same in cartoons as they do in the real world, but when you start separating cartoon characters from cartoon settings you have to decide which side gets the ability to break with physical law. As it turns out--logically or not- -both sides get it to some extent. Roger tends to rocket around a real world room when he drinks a glass of whiskey. But a human in Toontown also gets some special cartoon protection like being able to survive falls. Apparently toons have magic both in themselves and in their setting.
WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT is a cooperation between the two traditional competitors, Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and Walt Disney Enterprises, who decided late in the production that this film would be a Touchstone film and not a Walt Disney film. Perhaps they wanted it released through their adult division because of some violence, though their professed reason was that Jessica Rabbit was a little too well-endowed and a little under-dressed for a child audience. That cooperation and either the money it brought or the inspiration of the project bred more cooperation. As Disney was one of the production companies, getting permission to use Disney cartoon characters was probably no problem, but somehow they managed to get Warner Brothers' characters, complete with Mel Blanc's voice, so you could have Daffy Duck on screen with Donald Duck and making wisecracks about Donald's speech impediment. (Donald may have been wisecracking back but with Donald, who can tell?) Woody Woodpecker and hosts of other cartoon characters are also on hand. For humans, the cast is no so star-studded but Christopher Lloyd is on hand with another weird character for director Robert Zemeckis (BACK TO THE FUTURE). Then there are Kathleen Turner and Amy Irving who do the voice for Jessica: Turner does the speaking; Irving does the singing.
WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT is a great film for lots of reasons, many of which have little to do with the actual plot. Rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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