"The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" -- The Original Show Had More Charm, Dahlink by Homer Yen (c) 2000
Somewhere in the back of my mind, in a rarely visited location where cartoon characters that I have grown to love but am now too old to remember, there resides a flying squirrel and a likably dimwitted moose. Known as Rocky and Bullwinkle, their show was a crudely drawn but lively post-Cold War adventure that pitted these two against the evil machinations of three scoundrels named Boris Badinov, Natasha, and their fearless leader named Fearless Leader. There was a charming quirkiness to their episodes, which were brutally inane and featured sharp puns and rapid-fire humor. It possessed a shallowness that was just right for Saturday morning mindless fare.
It's now three decades later. Rocky hasn't flown in years. Bullwinkle laments about the disappearing woodlands throughout his home of Frostbite Falls. And our three villains are trapped in an endless cycle of reruns. But in the world of cartoons, anything is possible. Fearless Leader literally reaches out to a hungry movie executive to ink a movie deal. Suddenly, the three of them emerge as flesh-and-blood people (Jason Alexander as Boris, Renee Russo as Natasha, and Robert DeNiro as Fearless Leader). Free of their two-dimensional cartoon world and from Rocky and Bullwinkle, they now see an opportunity to hatch their latest plan to rule the world.
Fearless Leader and his band begin to build a television cable empire called RBTV (Really Bad Television). It will be filled with programs that are so bad that the viewing audience will be turned into zombies susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. The public will be told go out and vote in Fearless Leader as the new President in the next election. This is a plan worthy of Pinky and the Brain (you know, one is a genius and the other's insane).
Out to stop them is FBI agent Karen Sympathy (Piper Perabo) who is a soft, squishy, lovey-dovey, idealistic kind of gal. She enlists the help of Rocky (voiced, as in the original, by June Foray) and Bullwinkle (voiced by Keith Scott), and together, they try to save the world. Their travels are filled with absurd occurrences and pun-filled banter. At one point when the three are being approached by a group of security guards, Sympathy yells, "we've got to get out of here," to which Bullwinkle says, "OK, let's go to a commercial!" We see signs that point out places such as the Crimea River, and we pay a visit to Bullwinkle's alma mater, Wossamotta U. All of this silliness is fine up to a certain point, which is about the first 20 minutes. However, the novelty soon wears thin.
Give credit, though, to the live cast members and all of the cameos who deliver over-the-top acting to lend to its cartoonish personality. Especially good is DeNiro who seemed to be having endless fun as Fearless Leader. He speaks with an almost-impenetrable accent and even takes a turn at parodying the "you looking at me" line made famous from his role in "Taxi Driver."
Alas, "Rocky and Bullwinkle" just doesn't give even the inner child in us enough to sustain an 85-minute film. The story just doesn't go anywhere and we start to wonder if we're watching one of Fearless Leader's RBTV programs. There's a scene in this film that pretty much sums up the film's viewing experience. At Wossamotta U., students are protesting during a speech given by Bullwinkle. However, his speech is so inane that students find that they had nothing to object to. It's equally loony yet insipid, hollow yet harmless.
Grade: C S: 0 out of 3 L: 0 out of 3 V: 1 out of 3
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