Word: witnessed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 wit of the cartoons that inspired them. Nor do the human actors add much. Hoskins, in a role for which Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray were considered, lacks their effortless star quality. He's more like an armor-plated Yosemite Sam, gruff and explodable. Only Christopher Lloyd, as the evil Judge...
...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...
...could begrudge David Hockney his success when, as his retrospective shows, he creates a consistent world with such skill and wit...
Tomlin is an adept dear, and has a fine time hexing Moramax's corporate wimps with her voodoo snake whammy. Still, you may vainly search for signs of the quicksilver wit and emotional risk she radiates onstage. Someday Hollywood will harness her genius, in some movie with a different co-star. After all, who looks at anyone else when Bette Midler is around? It is a privilege merely to watch her walk her walks: the not-quite-ladylike mince, the executive sweep, the strumpet's strut. She lopes easily from City Sadie, the bitch goddess who spits out orders...
...unaccountably ignored by critics is Xavier Corbero's at the BlumHelman Warehouse (through June 11). At 53, Corbero, a Catalan who lives in Barcelona, is one of the best though most idiosyncratic sculptors in Europe; his show, "The Catalan Opening," contains work of such metaphorical richness, variety and wit that one would need to be an aesthetic pruneface not to enjoy...