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| Hey Eddieeee!!! |
Perhaps the ultimate live-action/animation hybrid (certainly the most technically-challenging to produce,) Who Framed Roger Rabbit holds a special place in my movie-loving heart. A nostalgic favorite, it’s the second movie I can recall going to see at the theater (the first was The Fox And The Hound, which was re-released earlier that same year,) and was the one VHS tape I owned that got worn out from too many viewings. Not to mention that a well-worn Roger Rabbit plush was my toy-companion of choice for many years. My love for the film hasn’t diminished much over the years, and it’s been a consistent staple of my various movie collections. I recall going in to my local Wherehouse Music (‘memba those?) in 2003 to purchase the special edition Vista Series DVD the day it came out. The clerk, obviously a kindred spirit, commented that he was surprised I was the only one who’d come in to pick up a copy that day.
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| No, I didn't own the infamous laserdisc. Sicko. |
On a technical level, the film still never fails to impress, especially when compared to today’s CG-heavy films, where everything can be (and usually is) faked more easily. The integration of the animated “toons” into the real world - and vice-versa - is convincing, if not always seamless. Everyone involved is clearly putting everything they’ve got into making the movie feel as real as possible. Bob Hoskins, playing frazzled detective Eddie Valiant, deserves highest accolades for his performance. Not only does he physically sell the idea that he’s speaking to - and grappling with - a cartoon rabbit, but he brings real gravitas to his character’s sorrow over the murder of his brother. Christopher Lloyd is just as memorable here, as the villainous Judge Doom, as he was in Back To The Future – and his crazy-eyed transformation during the climax is the stuff that life-scarring nightmares (and internet memes) are made of. Kudos as well to Joanna Cassidy and Alan Tilvern (as Dolores and R.K. Maroon, respectively,) whose naturalistic performances go a long way toward grounding the film's fantastical elements. And, for my money, no one has ever enacted a zanier vocal performance than Charles Fleischer as the hare-brained Roger Rabbit, singing, screaming and p-p-p-please-ing all over the place with complete abandon.
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| What the hell happened last night!? |
What continues to surprise me about the movie, besides its artistic and technical merits, is its ambitious script. It's a murder mystery, buddy-comedy, film noire, historical fiction and racial parable all wrapped up in a candy-colored cartoon shell. The fact that screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman (along with contributions from Zemeckis and producer Steven Spielberg) were able to tie so much together into a coherent and entertaining narrative is astounding. Unlike Gary K. Wolf’s contemporary-set novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit (which involved the murder of a comic-strip character, who spoke only in word bubbles,) the film adaptation moves the action to 1947. Thus the narrative can draw upon an overflowing well of history, portraying a Hollywood reaching the end of its golden age and a Los Angeles ripe with political and urban corruption. It’s a known fact of history that the automobile and rubber-tire industries worked together, along with the Auto Club of Southern California (and selected well-positioned government connections) to hasten the planning and construction of California’s first elevated freeway system, part of which involved dismantling the Pacific Electric railway system. At its height, the so-called “Red car” system was the largest electric rail system in the world, from the 1920s through the ‘50s. Like Chinatown before it, Who Framed Roger Rabbit mines the shady dealings involved in these landmark events and fits them within its own storyline. Judge Doom’s zealous monologue about the “beautiful” freeways about to make traffic jams “a thing of the past” is one of my favorite speeches in all of cinema.
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| Got a suitcase ... and a dream! |
One of the film's plot-points that many seem to gloss over is the segregation of the cartoon characters. The “toons” of Roger Rabbit exist as second-class citizens, put up with by the humans because of their status as entertainers, but otherwise ridiculed and shunted to their own section of town. One only needs to replace the “T” in toon with a “C” to recognize the term as a slur.
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| Slums of Toontown |
Main character Eddie Valiant is himself blindly prejudiced against the entire “race” (as it were) because his brother was killed by a toon, only coming around after getting to know Roger and regaining his sense of humor. The Ink & Paint Club, where Valiant encounters Roger’s amply-endowed wife, Jessica (sultrily voiced by Kathleen Turner, in an uncredited role,) is an obvious stand-in for Harlem’s famed Cotton Club – toons are the entertainers and service workers, while the clientele are strictly affluent humans. That Jessica Rabbit is counted amongst all the other toons despite the fact that she looks like a human is telling; a toon is a toon, no matter what they look like. This draws Jessica (no pun intended) as not just a femme fatale in the noire tradition, but also an “exotic other,” her existence defined by the gaze of the (mostly white) male humans that leer at her from the floor seats.
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| Down boy... |
The mere fact that Judge Doom is able to create his “Dip,” a weaponized chemical, as a means to execute toons (and not just criminals – witness his murder of a toon shoe to demonstrate the chemical in action) without any due process is surely more than convenient story-telling. In early drafts of the script, the Dip was referred to as a “final solution” to the “toon problem,” and with this in mind it’s chilling to watch the human characters stand around, shifting uncomfortably but otherwise silent, as the Judge expenses his twisted justice.
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| Doom brought his invisible beer keg to the party |
These topics deserve to be delved into further, but honestly are beyond the reach of this particular blog (perhaps if I’m able to obtain a copy of Song Of The South we’ll dig a little deeper ... but probably not.) Needless to say, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is an entertaining film with a very rich backdrop, and one that I’ll continue to appreciate for the rest of my life. It’s one of those films that I was shocked to discover isn’t universally loved (yes, the opinions of others is something I only grasped as I got older – that explains a lot.) The fact that Roger Rabbit himself hasn’t been deified, as Disney’s own “fab five” have, is a crying shame in my mind. We may revisit Roger in the future - not in his zany short films, but in his short-lived role as major theme park player. But, for now, I’ll leave Toontown behind and say That’s All, Folks!
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| Eyes up here, pig... |
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