Who Framed Roger Rabbit

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Directed by Robert Zemeckis (live-action)
Richard Williams (animation)
Written by Jeffery Price,
Peter S. Seaman
Starring Bob Hoskins,
Christopher Lloyd,
Joanna Cassidy,
Kathleen Turner (voice)
Charles Fleischer (voice)
Produced by Frank Marshall,
Robert Watts
Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures
Release date June 21, 1988
Runtime 103 min.
Language English
Budget US$70,000,000 (est.)
IMDb page

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 motion picture produced by Disney subsidiary Touchstone and Amblin Entertainment, that combines animation and live action. The film takes place in a fictionalized Los Angeles in 1947, where animated characters (derogatorily referred to as "Toons") are real beings who live and work alongside humans in the real world, most of them as actors in animated cartoons. At $70 million, it was one of the most expensive films ever at the time of its release, but it eventually brought in over $150 million during its original theatrical release. The film is notable for offering a unique chance to see many cartoon characters from different studios interacting in a single film and for being one of the last star turns for Mel Blanc and Mae Questel from animation's Golden Era.

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Cast, crew, and studio

The live-action sequences were directed by Robert Zemeckis and mostly filmed at Borehamwood film studios in Hertfordshire, England. The animated sequences were directed by Richard Williams and produced at his London animation studio. The film stars Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Joanna Cassidy and the voice of Charles Fleischer. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman from the 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf, and the music was composed by perennial Zemeckis film composer Alan Silvestri and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. It was released by Buena Vista Distribution under its Touchstone Pictures division.

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Roger Rabbit, from the opening scene
Roger Rabbit, from the opening scene

The movie opens with a Baby Herman short subject. This introduces the film's title character, who plays the supporting comic foul to infant cartoon star (actually a midget) Baby Herman. Eventually, it is revealed that Marvin Acme, the owner of the Acme Company and of Toontown, has been murdered. All signs point to Roger Rabbit, a toon star at Maroon Cartoons, who had recently been shown evidence that Acme and Roger's wife, Jessica Rabbit, a sexy Toon femme fatale (uncredited speaking voice by Kathleen Turner, singing voice by Amy Irving), had been playing pattycake together (literally) -- this is tantamount to infidelity in the eyes of a Toon.

The only person who can help clear Roger's name is Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), a washed-up, alcoholic detective who hates Toons because his brother, Teddy, was murdered by a Toon during a routine criminal investigation in Toontown years before when a piano was dropped on his head. Eddie is reluctantly forced into helping when Roger hides in his apartment, and soon finds himself shielding Roger from Judge Doom of the Toontown District Superior Court (Christopher Lloyd) and his "Toon Patrol" henchmen, a group of weasels.

Meanwhile, Doom's giant Cloverleaf Corporation, is plotting to buy out the interurban railway, the Pacific-Electric Red Car, and replace it with freeways (based on the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines). With Acme dead and no will having been found, Toontown is in danger of being bulldozed in order to make way for the freeway.

Eddie and Roger must find the will of the late Marvin Acme, which purportedly gives ownership of Toontown to the toons. Judge Doom is also trying to find the will in order to dispose of it, so he can destroy Toontown and build his freeway, and make himself profit out of the deal. If any toons happen to get in his way, Judge Doom feels no qualms about subjecting them to the "dip": a mixture he concocted of acetone, benzene, and turpentine (essentially paint thinners), and the only sure way to kill a Toon.

Eddie goes to the studios of Maroon Cartoons, Roger's employer, to help clear the rabbit's name. There he speaks to R.K. Maroon, who is shot during the confrontation. Thinking the shooter to be Jessica Rabbit, playing Roger as a patsy, Eddie chases the assassin all the way into Toontown, despite his trepidation after the death of his brother there years before. There Eddie discovers that the assassin was actually Judge Doom, who manages to kidnap Jessica, and later Roger so he can "dip" them.

In the film's climax, set in the Acme Warehouse, Judge Doom spews "dip" from a huge machine and tries to eradicate Roger and his wife, Jessica. He reveals his plans to then use his "dip" vehicle to erase Toontown. To combat Doom's weasel henchmen, the normally hard-nosed Eddie plays a clown, (not completely out of sync with his character, as the audience has been shown a photo of him and his brother working for Ringling Brothers earlier in the film) causing the weasels to die of laughter (evidently another way to kill a Toon, but one that merely turns them to angels, possibly to come back again). During the final battle with Eddie, Judge Doom is revealed to be a Toon after a steam-roller flattens him, and he reinflates himself by using one of the air tanks, revealing his Toon features. To Eddie's horror, Doom then reveals himself to be not just any Toon, but the one who murdered Eddie's brother. Just when it seems that Judge Doom will get the upper hand, Eddie uses a scissor-spring-loaded punch-glove mallet to knock open the drain valve on the "dip" machine. Judge Doom is drenched with "dip" and melts away.

The police soon arrive, and realize that Judge Doom was responsible for the murders of both Maroon, Acme, and Eddie Valiant's brother Teddy, though no one knows for sure who he was. Marvin Acme's will is found (Acme wrote it in "disappearing re-appearing ink" and Roger used the "blank" paper to write Jessica a love letter), and Toontown is handed over to the control of the Toons, who all cheer and sing a chorus of "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile."

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Critical reaction

Although test screenings proved disastrous, Roger Rabbit opened to generally positive reviews on June 21, 1988. Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert included the film on their lists of ten favorite films of 1988, with Ebert calling it "sheer, enchanted entertainment from the first frame to the last - a joyous, giddy, goofy celebration" [1]. Rotten Tomatoes lists Who Framed Roger Rabbit as being #42 on its Best Of Rotten Tomatoes list [2] all-time list with 100% positive reviews. As the website was created in 1995, and would only have the option of searching past archives, it is not able to give an accurate contemporary depiction of the review success.

While Who Framed Roger Rabbit is considered a modern film classic, the film has also had its share of criticism. Much of the criticism revolves around the inconsistent tone of the film: the juxtaposition of the zany cartoon characters and the rough film noir story they appear in. While a blend between the two was the intended result of the producers, some people feel that the tone of the film deviates too much to properly identify it as either a film for children or a film for adults. While sex and violence were very prominent in Golden Age animation, the more blatant and saturated usage of such elements in this film, particularly in the characters of Jessica Rabbit (sex) and Judge Doom (violence), make many American parents and viewers unaccostumed to seeing such elements in animation uncomfortable.

The film's finale, during which its main characters are essentially tied to a rope waiting to be sprayed by a hose, was cited as being weak and unimaginative. The film's animation is also accused of using too much superfluous movement. Held cels are very rarely used in Roger Rabbit, and most of the animation is on "ones" (each frame is animated, as opposed to the cheaper, more familiar method of animating every other frame, i.e. "twos"). Even when characters are standing still, they continue to move (particularly Roger, whose ear movements were based upon ballet patterns), and some animators and animation artists have cited the extra movement as unnecessary and distracting.

The movie won four Academy Awards: Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing, Best Effects, Visual Effects, Best Film Editing and a Special Award for Richard Williams for "animation direction and creation of the cartoon characters". The film received four further nominations: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography and Best Sound.

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Significance

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is seen as a landmark film that sparked the most recent era in American animation. The field had become lackluster and worn-out during the 1970s and 1980s, to the point where even giants in the field such as The Walt Disney Company were considering giving up on major animated productions. This expensive film (production cost of $70 million - a staggering amount for the time) was a major risk for the company, but one that paid off handsomely. It inspired other studios to dive back into the field of animation; it also made animation acceptable with the moviegoing public. After Roger Rabbit, interest in the history of animation exploded, and such legends in the field as Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and even Ralph Bakshi were seen in a new light and received credit and acclaim from audiences worldwide.

Also interesting was despite being produced by Disney's Touchstone Pictures division (in association with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment), Roger Rabbit also marked the first (and to date, only) time that characters from several animation studios (including Universal, MGM, Republic, Turner Entertainment, and Warner Bros.) appeared in one film. This allowed the first-ever meetings between Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse and between Daffy Duck and Donald Duck.

Eventually, several additional animated shorts featuring Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, and Baby Herman would be released. These shorts were presented in front of various Touchstone/Disney features in an attempt to revive short subject animation as a part of the moviegoing experience. These shorts include Tummy Trouble released in front of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (this was included on the original video release of the film), Roller Coaster Rabbit shown in front of Dick Tracy and Trail Mix-Up shown in front of A Far Off Place. They were all released on video in 1996 on a tape called The Best of Roger Rabbit, and in 2003 on a special edition DVD of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Tummy Trouble was produced at the main Walt Disney Feature Animation studio in Burbank, California; the other two shorts were produced at the satellite studio located at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida.

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Trivia

  • The R.K. Maroon cartoons in which Roger appears are billed as Baby Herman and Roger Rabbit cartoons (or simply referred to as Baby Herman cartoons). Although Roger is arguably the focal point of each cartoon, he does not recieve star billing. Many 1930s/1940s cartoon series featured a comic secondary character in support of a cute main character, often resulting in the secondary character outshadowing the first (for example, Mickey Mouse and his co-stars Donald Duck and Goofy, Gandy Goose and Sourpuss, Andy Panda and Woody Woodpecker, Tweety and Sylvester, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, etc.)
The removed frame of Jessica Rabbit's crotch.
The removed frame of Jessica Rabbit's crotch.
  • Several Easter eggs were hidden into the film by its animators. Tape-based analog video such as VHS did not reveal these, but better image quality delivering technologies such as the laserdisc were said to reveal amongst others the phone number of Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Also, when Bennie the Cab wrecks at night and Eddie and Jessica roll out, there are two separate frames, within two seconds of each other, showing a blurry shot of her private area (near her crotch). Disney recalled the laserdisc and issued another disc, later claiming that it was an incorrectly painted cel. Oddly, they also stated that the cel in question could be seen on the new disc and on the VHS version, promting many to raise the question "if it's on the VHS version too, why was only the laserdisc recalled, and if the new discs were reissued with the same flawed cel, why did they go through the trouble in the first place?"
  • A brief scene consisting of the toon Baby Herman giving a sexual gesture to a female (human) extra on the set of the opening cartoon was edited out of the first DVD edition of the movie, though it can be found on editions of the VHS,laserdisc and Vista Series DVD issues.
  • The film's credits run for nearly ten minutes. At the time of its release, Roger Rabbit held the record for having the longest end credits sequence in cinema history.
  • The lack of question mark in the title is allegedly due to a superstition that films with a question mark in the title do badly at the box office.
  • A contract was signed between Disney and Warner stating that Bugs and Mickey would each receive exactly the same amount of screen time. This is why the script had Bugs, Mickey, and Eddie altogether in one scene falling from a skyscraper; in this scene, the mouse and the rabbit speak the same exact number of words of dialogue, as per the contract.
  • As many as 100 separate pieces of film were optically combined to incorporate the animated and live-action elements. The animated characters themselves were hand-drawn without computer animation; analogue optical effects were used for adding shadows and lighting to the toons to give them a more "realistic," three-dimensional appearance.
  • Gary Wolf, author of the original novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, corresponded with many fans of the film through written letters and the Internet, compiling an exhaustive listing of the many hidden "easter eggs" in the film and in the later Roger Rabbit short films. He has provided copies of this list to anyone who requests it. Wolf also sued Disney in 2001 for unpaid earnings related to the film.
  • In the scene where Judge Doom comes to the cafe looking for Roger, Angelo speaks up when he hears that there is a reward saying: "Yeah, I've seen a rabbit" turns around and addresses thin air: "Say hello, Harvey." Many think this is a reference to the James Stewart movie Harvey and perceive it as an error, because the movie came out in 1950 and Roger Rabbit takes place in 1947. However the stage version of Harvey came out in 1944, to which, logically, Angelo must be referring, although whether the writers intended this is unclear.
  • A slightly earlier draft of the screenplay revealed Judge Doom to also be the hunter who mortally shot Bambi's mother, thus providing more insight into his sadistic, cruel, and calloused nature towards his fellow 'toons'. However, Disney allegedly nixed the idea, most likely believing the idea to be overkill and not wanting to scare younger audiences with the character more than necessary for the emotional purpose of the movie. This idea was later incorporated into Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and suggested that Gaston (the villian) was the one who shot Bambi's mother.
  • This is the first Disney movie to be shown on Time Warner's Cartoon Network. However, when it was shown, it was edited for time.
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Other films combining live action with animation

Audiences were amazed by the ground-breaking special effects used in Who Framed Roger Rabbit to create a "realistic" portrayal of the interaction of animated characters and live actors. While the film did this with more advanced technology than previous films, the combination of animation and live action had been practised since the beginnings of animated cartoons, often to very good effect. See Live-action/animated film.

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Errors

  • Despite the film being set in 1947, the model sheets used for many of the characters in it, especially the Warner Bros. stars, who were on paid license from Warner Bros., were typically older ones that were not actually in use at the time (Bugs Bunny, noticeably, used an early sheet that was phased out of use at Warner Bros./Leon Schlesinger Pictures in 1943). Also, several characters who weren't created by 1947 were included at the behest of the film crew; for example, the Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote appear because they are Robert Zemeckis' favorite cartoon characters. The appearance of post-1947 Toons can be explained by the idea that (in the universe of the film), Toons are sentient beings who exist independent of humans and that certain Toons were around but hadn't started working in films yet.
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Cartoon characters that make cameo appearances


(*) Denotes anachronisms; these characters (or, in the cases of characters such as Tinkerbell, the animated versions of them that appear in the film) were created after 1947.

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External links

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References

  • "Behind the Ears: The True Story of Roger Rabbit". (2003). Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Vista Series [DVD]. Burbank: Buena Vista Home Video.
  • Gray, Milton (1991). Cartoon Animation: Introduction to a Career. Lion's Den Publications. ISBN 096-284445-4.
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