Review 236: Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a remarkable film, not just as entertainment but also as filmmaking, beautifully and creatively blending live-action and animation,

It's 1947 Hollywood and Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) a down-on-his-luck detective, is hired to find proof that Marvin Acme, gag factory mogul and owner of Toontown, is playing hanky-panky with femme fatale Jessica Rabbit (Kathleen Turner), wife of Maroon Cartoon superstar, Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer). When Acme is found murdered, all finger point to Roger, and the sinister, power-hungry Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) is on a mission to bring Roger to justice. Roger begs the Toon-hating Valiant to find the real evildoer and the plot thickens as Eddie discovers scandal after scandal and realizes the very existence of Toontown is at stake.

The plot is a genius mixture of comedy, mystery, intensity and noire, we get a story that takes us back to the 1940's, back to one of the decades in the Golden Age of animation and as a result of all this contains many references to classic cartoon characters e.g. Dumbo, Mickey Mouse and Buggs Bunny, and it also takes us back to the hard times of the 1940's when they had congestion problems and which is one of the themes in the film which pertains to the dismantling of public transportation systems by private companies who would profit from an automobile transportation system and freeway infrastructure.

Near the end of the film, Judge Doom reveals his plot to destroy Toon Town to make way for the new freeway system. This is an indirect historical reference to the dismantling of public transportation trolley lines by National City Lines during the 1930s in what is also known as the Great American streetcar scandal. The name of Doom's company, Cloverleaf Industries, is a reference to a common freeway-ramp configuration. The assertion that a conspiracy caused the demise of electric urban street railways was the subject of a session at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board entitled "Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Conspiracy Theories and Transportation," which concluded that such systems met their demise for a number of other reasons (economic, cultural, societal, technological, legal) having nothing to do with a conspiracy, even though it was true that National City Lines, Inc. (NCL) was a front company—organized by General Motors' Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. in 1922, reorganized in 1936 into a holding company — for the express purpose of acquiring local transit systems throughout the United States. "Once [NCL] purchased a transit company, electric trolley service was immediately discontinued, the tracks quickly pulled up, the wires dismantled ..." and General Motors buses replaced the trolleys.

Also in Los Angeles, during the 1940s, car and tire companies teamed up against the Pacific Electric Railway system and bought them out of business. Where the freeway runs in Los Angeles is where the Red Car used to be." And the Red Car plot, suburb expansion, urban and political corruption really did happen.

Further references included The "Ink and Paint Club" resembling the Harlem Cotton Club, while director Zemeckis compared Judge Doom's invention of "The Dip" to eliminate all the Toons as Hitler's Final Solution.

Another theme in the film is friendship: At the beginning of the film Eddie Valiant is an alcoholic private investigator who holds a grudge against Toons but when Roger comes to him and begs him for help he a bond grows between them and then he begins to see the dark side and that friendship is one of the best and most hilarious friendships ever displayed on screen.

Robert Zemeckis' direction is unobtrusive, extarordinry, remarkable, the cinematography is beautiful and captures the old fashioned beauty of the 1940's, the animation effects are splendid, the score by Alan Silvestri is catchy and evokes the classic cookyness of music from the 1940's, the production design (recreating 1947) is excellent, the costumes are gorgeous, the characters design is stupendous and beautifully detailed, the special effects are fantastic, the stunt work and slapstick is well coordinated, the props are immaculate, theres this very funny opening cartoon sequence, the jokes are brilliant, it's fast paced (there literally was never a dull moment), the action scenes are thrilling, the make up is rich, there are some genius scenes of suspence and intensity and the ending makes me laugh.

The whole cast and voice cast was wonderful, Bob Hoskins gives one of the best performances of his career as Eddie Valiant and really brings the iron center to the piece, he goes from having a grudge against toons from having to help on,

Charles Fleischer is hilarious as Roger Rabbit and brings some of that classic cartoon humor to his character

Kathleen Turner is just stunning as Jessica Rabbit, Roger Rabbit's Toon wife

Joanna Cassidy is luminous and lovely as Dolores, Eddie's on-off girlfriend

Christopher Lloyd was an inspired villain playing Judge Doom

 and the rest of the cast is great.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a hilarious blend of live action and animation...    and one of those movies were you're always asking "How the hell did they do that?", 5/5.

The Annonymous Critic.