Movie Review: Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Question marks in movie titles is equivalent to saying “Hamlet” in a theatre.

Christmas Eve, 1989.  Suburb in Central Georgia just north of Atlanta.  I was six years old and excited as hell for Santa to come.  My family had a tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve night, I think to shut us up enough to go to bed.  The present I ended up opening that night was Who Framed Roger Rabbit in it’s VHS glory.  I still have that VHS, and it still plays without tracking, but that’s neither here nor there.  My family gathered round our TV and watched the movie before we kids had to go to bed, and I became absolutely enamored with that movie.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit is definitely one of my favorite memories of the 1980s.  December 24, 1989 is also the last time I saw that movie sober… until now.

You see, growing up, Roger Rabbit was the movie I chose to watch when I was home sick from school every single time.  Anytime in the 1990s I was home delirious with fever and high off of cough syrup, I wanted to watch Roger Rabbit, and the tradition carried on well until I was in college the first time.  I learned pretty early on that the movie is pretty damn awesome when you’re out of your mind.  But because I had seen the movie so many times from being sick, it never occurred to me to watch it when I was healthy.  I just wonder how much more of a mind trip that movie would have been had the Pig Head scene been included?

Well, the VHS doesn’t have the Pig Head scene, so I hunted down a DVD to rent that has it.  But I decided, if I’m going to rent it just to see the Pig Head scene, I may as well watched the whole digitally superior movie.  And just so I can attest that I have finally seen the movie sober after 20 and a half years (that didn’t make me feel old at all, no way), I’m high off of energy drinks.  Let’s do this!

Oh, and just to get it out of the way, Kathleen Turner wasn’t credited as Jessica Rabbit, but she let her name be all over Baby Geniuses?  Really?  Bill Murray makes smarter career moves.

Let’s face it, I just wanted to mention Bill Murray.

Watching the movie sober, I learned a few things.  One, it’s still a mind trip either which way.  The only difference is I’m more cognitively aware of the movie sober and pick up on things I otherwise missed out on, which I will get to later.  Two, I’m not six years old anymore.  I mean, I always knew it wasn’t a kid’s movie, but when you realize the biggest product placement in the thing is Budweiser, one starts to realize how innocent they were as a child.

So let’s talk about the movie.  As we all know, it starts off with the short “Something’s Cookin’” staring Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman.  I think this is a brilliant way to start the movie.  First of all, it introduces us to Roger Rabbit.  We know he’s a toon actor who’s head hasn’t exactly been in the game lately.  Secondly, it just feels like an homage to cartoons before the movie of yesteryear.

“Stole your rattle!”

So we learn the movie takes place in Hollywood in the year 1947.  Eddie Valiant is hired to prove that Roger’s wife Jessica has been stepping out on him.  Eddie does it and finds out that patty cake isn’t just a euphemism for sex, it’s a fetish.  Eddie catches Jessica in the act of patty cake with Marvin Acme, takes pictures, shows the evidence to Roger.  Roger promptly freaks the hell out, so Eddie and Marooon give him a drink to “calm his nerves”, but we learn that Roger can’t hold his liquor.  The next day, Acme turns up dead, and all evidence points to Roger.  There’s only one problem: he didn’t do it.

Roger hides out at Eddie’s place and begs him to prove that he didn’t kill Acme.  Eddie reluctantly agrees and discovers that there’s this whole conspiracy going on between Maroon and Cloverleaf.  And stuff.  I mean, we’ve all seen the movie.  While the plot is awesome, it seems almost secondary to all the other awesome stuff going on.  How can I count the ways?

At the beginning of the movie, the director of the cartoon Roger’s in gets mad because Roger can’t make stars appear when hit in the head.  Roger tries to prove he can do it, but no avail.

I want to go into one subtle detail I never picked up on when I was out of my mind: Judge Doom’s glove.  I don’t mean the gloves he always wears.  I mean the glove that he put on to dip the shoe.  At first, I thought it was overkill: he was already wearing gloves, and at that point you think he’s a human so it just seems unnecessary.  But once the big reveal happens, you realize that if he hadn’t worn the glove at that point, then that whole scene wouldn’t have made sense.

As I have previously mentioned, I’m obsessed with Alice in Wonderland.  This means that there is one scene I double love.  When Eddie is running away from Not Jessica, he runs into an out of order men’s room.  The door handle is of course the one from Disney’s original animated Alice in Wonderland.  Right on the other side, written on the wall is “For a good time call Allyson “Wonderland”.  The best is yet to be.”  I heard that once upon a time, Michael Eisner’s phone number was written on the wall, but I didn’t see the movie in theatres, and even if I had I would have only been five, so I wouldn’t know.

For a good time, for a good time call…

And since we’re on this whole Eddie falling straight down business, I noticed that while Warner Bros. had this agreement that their major stars had to have equal air time with Disney stars, Warner Bros. actually got more solo time.  In a part I skipped, Yosemite Sam flew over the wall of ToonTown with no Disney star accompanying him.  Tweety appears in the Eddie falling out of the building scene with no Disney counterpart, as well.  So there was really no reason Bugs needed to be there to turn Mickey Mouse into an asshole.  I hate Bugs Bunny, and the influence he has on Mickey Mouse in this scene is just… disgusting.

Peer pressure hurts other people.

It was around the time that Judge Doom as explaining the freeway thing to the main characters that I realized, as a kid I was lucky I didn’t know that Judge Doom was Doc Brown from Back to the Future.  The movie Dumbo scared the holy bajeezus out of me.  I don’t think I could have made it through Back to the Future knowing that Doc Brown tried to kill every cartoon ever.

I mean, seriously?  This guy drives a Mr. Fusion powered flying DeLorean?

“Look!  Stars!  Ready when you are, Raoul!”  Like a ton of bricks.

Closing comments on the main movie itself: Roger Rabbit is a cockblock, and why do melting characters find a need to announce it?

Now, the Pig Head scene.  The whole reason behind me renting a movie I already own.  My goodness, it was awesome.  I felt Eddie’s absolute horror.  They say it was cut because it was slowing down the movie, but it was just a great scene, and it actually makes sense with the scene that was supposed to follow it.  That point in the movie always felt rushed to me.

Oh, what could have been.

I find it funny that the first time I make it through the movie sober since 1989, my review is incoherent and messy.  It’s actually fitting, but now I must rate this thing.  If you thought I’d give it anything less than 5 stars, you have not seen the movie.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of the best movies of all time.  It has something for everyone: kids, adults, junkies, drunks, and sober people.

To give it less than 5 stars would be an injustice worthy of Dip.