Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Why have I been sleeping on my ass for the past 7 years before getting to this movie?




I really and truly think this movie doesn't get half the praise it truly deserves, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a movie worthy of discussion, analysis, praise, and overall enjoyment regardless of age. It's such a unique and bonkers yet brilliant idea to esentially set a real world crime noir in the bright and slapstick world of cartoon characters. Set in 1940s Los Angeles a gruff private investigator named Eddie slowly gets enbroiled with cleaning the name of cartoon star Roger Rabbit as he's set up for murder, but Eddie has a damaged past and cares nothing for toons yet more pieces fall into place and the plot thickens. Already the cast in this movie is what makes half the movie as great as it is, Bob Hoskins is a trememdous lead and effortlessly acts through the film despite that none of his toon co-stars are there in the flesh (in a sense), George Fleischer couldn't play a bumbling yet still very much fearing for his life toon better if he tried, Christopher Lloyd might have his coolest look in this film and it's indeed a different role for him but one I feel to be almost the most effective, and I tip my hat to Kathleen Turner for giving us the voice and personality of Jessica Rabbit in all her glory. Rock on. Now we get to talk about the technicals which is an obelisk sized task in just text, they have entire behind the scenes documentaries on how they blocked, shot, interacted, and implemented all these animated characters, props, and scenery. It is ingenious and any film school that doesn't talk about it in some way is a hack, they had to use in scale to the animation rubber replicas of the characters and I don't know how to describe it, cause they key out the dummy and layer the animation and it looks seamless. And this was a huge huge deal at the time, this was the movie where Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse shared a scene, nothing like that happened before. Even with movies like Space Jam A New Legacy it was still all properties of Warner Bros., but this is where every animation studio chipped in and that was a huge deal before the 90s, and even then it wasn't a common occurence, plus I'm a nerd for this kind of thing so I'm peering in the background naming any characters I can. I will admit it's been a few years since I last saw this movie but, I'm not entirely sure this was made for kids. I mean Looney Tunes were primarily believe it or not, made more for adults but kids loved it and it still worked. The same applies to here, we get some pretty gruesome deaths both seen and implied, Eddie drinks a fair bit, Jessica Rabbit I don't think I need to say much more about her, you get a little bit of language, it just seems more geared towards at least older kids and adults. That didn't stop me though, I must have saw this when I was maybe 10 years old and I absolutely loved it. I loved the story, the characters, the humor, the musical score mother of pearl! Let me tell you right now, real talk, I cannot listen to the first half of Valiant & Valiant without getting in an emotional mess and weeping. It is that damn good, and the music score is very jazzy/bluesy which I adore endlessly. I mean I don't think I need to tell people to go see it, it's an incredibly strong film even if the mystery aspect isn't absolute shall we say, I can't recommend it more. But what's the score? I don't know if I wanna give it an 8 or 9. It deserves either but I'm gonna give it a 9/10, 4 stars check it out!

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