Word: toontown
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Blanc's memoir makes clear, his heart and vocal cords belong to the real Toontown, Warner Bros., in the days when Yosemite Sam and Pepe Le Pew were as popular as Bogart and Boyer. For those who care, Blanc reveals the secrets of the stars: why Bugs Bunny speaks with a Brooklyn accent, why Porky stutters, and why Daffy Duck lisps. Those who do not care, as Blanc concludes, are desthpicable...
...from '40s Hollywood animation are creatures of a subhuman species known as Toons. They breathe, they emote, and sometimes they get cuckolded by their sultry wives. Jessica Rabbit, Roger's spouse, is one such bimbette. "I'm not bad," Jessica pouts, "I'm just drawn that way." But all Toontown knows she's been spending time with Marvin Acme, who owns the local gagworks. So when Marvin gets bumped off, Roger is the prime suspect. His only hope is Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), a human detective who has been burned out and bitter ever since a Toon killed his brother...
Roger Rabbit careers like a Toontown trolley and boasts a technical dexterity that Walt Disney could only have daydreamed of. At first you may snap to suspicious attention when, say, a cartoon stork pedals a real bicycle, or Jessica diddles a human's necktie. But the film encourages you to vacation in its ingenuity. Drop by the Ink and Paint Club, Toontown's toniest dive, where the password is "Walt sent me," penguin waiters patrol in tuxedos, and Daffy and Donald Duck, together for the first time, perform a piano duet. Meet old friends like Mickey and Bugs, Tweety...
...mean you could have taken your hand out of that handcuff at any time?" an incredulous Eddie asks Roger after the rabbit slips his shackles. "Not at any time," comes the retort. "Only when it was funny." Such are the Toontown laws of physics; they do not always apply to this movie. Every framed frame is beguiling, as befits a pioneering project made by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) and ace Animator Richard Williams. But not all the gags -- even those quoted from such Bugs Bunny classics as Falling Hare and Rabbit Seasoning -- have the limber...
...lends her voice to Jessica). Something got lost in the move from storyboard to screen, and in the stretch from seven minutes to 103. From sad experience, Disney and Spielberg should know the perils of paying huge homage to modest genres, yet Roger Rabbit has the odor of a Toontown Tron, a 1941 for 1988. Zemeckis deserves credit for his will and wit, but he must have been handcuffed by the size of both the film and his ambitions for it. And, unlike the cartoon Roger Rabbit, this gifted director couldn't get out. Even when it wasn't funny...