Rich pageant parades round Roger Rabbit

Press, 5 December 1988, Page 4

Rich pageant parades round Roger Rabbit

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hans petrovic

‘WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT”

Directed by Robert Zemeckis Screenplay by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman Where did all those characters — Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, Mickey Mouse, Porky Pig, Woody Woodpecker and Bambi — from the great cartoon films of the 1940 s go when they finished their day’s work at the Hollywood studios? If you think about it, it seems only reasonable to assume they had some quiet refuge to go to in between, the indignities of being chased, chopped, blown up, frazzled or fried for the latest Looney tune or Silly Symphony. “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (Savoy) shows that all those characters are real enough and has them interacting their complex personal lives with human beings more than in any earlier film. Thus, we find that these animated characters, known as Toons, live in the Hollywood suburb of Toontown, a kind of ghetto which any nonToon would think twice before entering. Here, the colours are pastel bright, the sun and trees sing merry melodies, up is down, vice is versa, and the only immutable law is that everything must be funny. In fact, the Toons’ only reason for existing is to make people laugh.

To the old-time menagerie, the makers of this film have added several new creations whose faces have already become so well known that it is difficult to believe that they were first released on an unsuspecting world only about six months ago.

Roger Rabbit is a

floppy-eared, lovable, goofy stunt clown who costars in the “Baby Herman” cartoons. Roger loves everybody, especially his sexy wife, Jessica, who declares in her Kathleen Turner voice, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.” Although some vicious gossip about her has been affecting his work, Roger’s worries about Jessica’s fidelity are nothing compared with what he faces when he becomes the prime suspect in a murder case. With no one else to turn to, Roger’s only hope lies with another desperate character — Eddie Valiant. Bob Hoskins, best known for his role in “Mona Lisa,” plays Valiant as a dishevelled, down-on-his-luck private detective, who has been bitter since a Toon killed his brother by dropping a piano on his head.

Valiant has sworn never to take on another case involving a Toon, but hard times find him involved in this murder, where all the signs point to an innocent Roger Rabbit. The job is to find out who framed him.

The other real-life characters include Joanna Cassidy as Valiant’s loyal girlfriend; Christopher Lloyd as the sinister Judge Doom; and Stubby Kaye as Marvin Acme, head of Hollywood’s biggest joke factory.

Actors have often been warned not to work with animals or children, for they will invariably steal the scene. The same applies to Toons, who interact with real-life characters for 57 of the film’s 103 minutes.

All the action stops when Daffy and Donald, the two greatest feathered farceurs, join forces for the first time in a piano duet. “Can anyone understand what Thith duck ith thaying,” says Daffy. “Thith ith the latht time I work with thomeone with a thpeech impediment.”

Dumbo flies on to the Maroon Studios. “He’s on loan from Disney,” Valiant is told. “He works for peanuts.”

There are touches of the Cotton Club, in black Harlem, when Valiant visits the Ink and Paint Club, an underground nightclub open only to human patrons who are served and entertained exclusively by Toons, including the luscious Jessica.

After many highly inventive, sometimes hilarious, misadventures, the villain is revealed to be a sort of comicidal maniac who has set out to destroy all Toons and their part of town.

Unfortunately, the plot becomes a little too complicated for what is intended basically as a light-hearted exercise in the wizardry of specialeffects film-making, sometimes distracting from some of the film’s many magical moments. In fact, it would be necessary to see the film more than once to catch all its visual and one-line gags, as well as to fully appreciate its technical expertise. One has to remember

that Bob Hoskins, and the other human actors, had to walk around talking to imaginary persons, with the cartoon characters later being painted on to the film. Penguin drink waiters can be seen carrying trays and glasses, but how did these objects move before the birds were drawn in?

Many months of negotiations had to be gone through to obtain the permission to use various characters whose copyrights are owned by various studios, such as Disney and Warner Bros. The history of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” began when Disney Studios took an option on Gary K. Wolfe’s novel, "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?” Some years later, Disney and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, having joined forces, presented the screenplay to Robert Zemeckis, the highly inventive director of such successes as “Romancing the Stone” and “Back to the Future.” Zemeckis welcomed the chance to create a new, funny cartoon character, “Roger Rabbit is a character all of his own,” he says. “We took a classic clown pyramid shape and pointed head, then added orange pants with pink, floppy ears. Then we gave him a bow tie, a crazed look and great big feet. I guess he has a Disney body and a Warners head.”

Roger Rabbit is certainly a winner. He is lovable and laughable, wistful and wacky — by far the best cartoon character to have been created in the last couple of decades. He is here to delight children of all ages, and will no doubt be around for a long time.