The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle Reviewed by Christian Pyle Directed by Des McAnuff Written by Kenneth Lonergan Starring Rene Russo, Jason Alexander, Piper Perabo, Robert De Niro, and the voices of June Foray and Keith Scott Grade: A
When I saw that the classic early 60's cartoon "Rocky and Bullwinkle" was headed to the big screen with an all-star cast and a mixture of live-action and animation, I predicted, "It's either gonna be really, really good or really, really bad." Either the filmmakers would get the distinctive humor of the cartoon (a clever mixture of political satire, word play, and self-reflexive references) or they wouldn't. The verdict is in, and they got it right.
The movie finds the cartoon players suffering from boredom. The cancellation of their TV series left Rocket J. Squirrel (voice of June Foray, the original Rocky) and Bullwinkle J. Moose (voice of Keith Scott) with nothing to do. Likewise, their Pottsylvanian nemeses Boris (Jason Alexander), Natasha (Rene Russo), and Fearless Leader (Robert De Niro) were crushed (literally) by the collapse of the Iron Curtain. So, the bad guys hatch a plot to conquer the live-action world. With the help of movie producer Minnie Mogul (Janeane Garofalo), the evil trio emerges into our world and sets about enslaving America with the hypnotic effects of bad television. FBI Agent Karen Sympathy (Piper Perabo) realizes that only her childhood heroes can save the day and brings Rocky and Bullwinkle into the real world. (She also gets the deep-voiced Narrator to boot.) Before they can fight the baddies, our heroes have to take a road trip across the country, a trip with several twists, turns, and celebrity cameos (including Randy Quaid, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, John Goodman, Whoopi Goldberg, Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell, David Alan Grier, Don Novello, and Billy Crystal).
The key element in the cartoon series for me was the voice of William Conrad as the Narrator who commented with deadpan seriousness about the comical goings-on. In the movie, Keith Scott does a great Conrad imitation and the interaction between the Narrator and the characters produces the majority of the laughs. (A favorite moment: the Narrator comments on a bad pun by saying, "Even their wordplay had become weak and hackneyed," and Bullwinkle responds, "No, it was always like this.")
"The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle" indulges unashamedly in cartoon silliness while winking at the audience and sharing the laughter at how silly it is. Everything a critic might blast in the movie, screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan attacks with a preemptive strike. Why don't they fly rather than driving across the country. Bullwinkle: "But then it wouldn't be a road movie!" Why are the villains live-action and the heroes animated? Karen: "Hey I didn't write the movie!" When Karen asserts that Rocky and Bullwinkle aren't in a cartoon anymore, a safe falls from the sky in the path of her car (followed by bundles of dynamite marked with big letters TNT).
De Niro is probably the last actor I'd expect to see in this movie, but then who ever thought Nicholson would do "Batman?" Being a serious Actor in Hollywood (a live-action cartoon in real life) must get tiresome, and there must be an urge to just be silly. De Niro parodied his many serious performances as gangsters in last year's "Analyze This." In "Rocky and Bullwinkle," he seems to be having a great time doing a Nazi right out of "Hogan's Heroes." He even gets the chance to parody his "are you talkin' to me" scene in "Taxi Driver."
I'm not sure if "Rocky and Bullwinkle" plays as well to kids as it does to adults. My wife and I took two with us, and they were underwhelmed. (They much preferred "Gone in 60 Seconds" and "X-Men.") Come to think of it, I never really liked the cartoon when I was a kid. But, seeing it again when I was old enough to get the in-jokes, I loved it. And I loved the movie. It's sheer fun that's intelligent and silly at the same time.
Bottom Line: If you like the cartoon, you'll love the movie.
© 2000 Christian L. Pyle
Read my reviews and others at the Mad Review: http://www.madreview.com/main.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews