Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

©1988 Disney

Hollywood in 1947. The slump of Roger Rabbit, the star of Maroon Studio cartoons, continues, as the rumour spreads that his wife Jessica Rabbit is having an affair. The head of the studio, R.K. Maroon, asks a private detective Eddie Valinat to take a picture of the affair between Jessica and Marvin Acme. (Acme is the recurring fictional company appears in Loony Tunes.)Eiddie's pictures make Roger burst out of the studio with shock.

The next day Acme is found murdered. Roger becomes the primary suspect, and Judge Doom, who is in charge of this case, threatens to melt him with Dip when he finds him. Roger goes to Eddie for help, claiming that he didn't do anything wrong. Eddie used to work for cartoon characters before his brother was killed by a toon, which made him despise cartoons. But as Roger gets in trouble, he reluctantly helps him and the great adventure begins, and they find the enormous schene behind the case.

***

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is actally based on a novel. The fact that the source of this unique film that combines live-action and animation is a book is very intriguing. Could any writer, even if he has the most lively writing style, can transport the strong atmosphere of the cartoons/comic books to the his work and make it as interesting as the source?

The cover of "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?"

The characters in the book were only a tool and it was originally written to show the political opinions of the writer. Instead of getting rid of critical aspects of the book, the director Rober Zemeckis gave life and story to the characters, thus creating a memorable visual. That's what he's known for as we can see from Polar Express and Forest Gump.
Nevertheless, this film is a well-written hard-boiled detective story. The brain-racking process of the filmmakers are obvious when we see the script. In addition, this film has a strong characteristic that no other film can reach: the combination of art and realism. The 2D characters are mixed with the real world and pretend to be humans. Such ruthless combination is the shameless and proud attitude of the film. They pulled out everything they could use from Disney and Loony without discrimmination.

Although the ending is predictable and the alibi of the suspect is shcematized for us to notice at one glance, but it has seamless plot with enough suspense and reveal. It doesn't always follow the rules too, since the characters of the film are following a very anarchistic behaviour, and they are acceptable since they are cartoon characters. Just like the dramatic reveal that Jessica, who loves her husband so dearly, was mistaken for having an affair just by doing a patty-cake with someone else.

©1988 Disney

They are doing everything so naturally and take it for granted. The toons act and make complicated action with the actors and there is nothing awkward about that. Sitting right next to a cartoon character, the human characters even complain that he is "cartoonish", and there is even boldly put date in the subtitle. The Hollywood in 1947 is the background, so the characters of Fantasia or Dumbo run around the studio.
This film has both Mickey and Bugs, yet we also see old characters such as Betty Boop and Woody Woodpecker. The filmmakers either borrowed the characters by paying the studio or worked together with the animators. The cameos are more than a hundread when you look, and the deleted characters are also enormous. The Pink Panther was in the original synopsis too. This is also the last film to have all of the original voice casts of the Golden Age of Cartoons. Walt Disney's name and photo seems to be in the film too. Seeing how Disney is very strict about the using Walt Disney, we can see Disney clearly had great hopes for this film.

The special effect is stunning for the technology at that time, since it was too early to use computer. Unlike Tron(1982) that needed a large number of people, Disney animators were already busy with Littler Mermaid (1989) next year. Thus instead of using computers, the animation director Richard Williams put reality in the lighting and the shadows, making the existance of the cartoons plasible. Compared with previous Disney cartoons or other cartoons, the light and contrast of the film is exceptional. It's quite shocking that Oliver and Company, a film with the roughest and the dirtiest animation Disney has ever produced, was released in the same year

©1988 Disney. The amazing shadow effect.

It's a familiar detective film where a simple case snowballs into a grand plan, just like Jack Nicholson's Chinatown. Just by the premise in the begining, finding how the film would progress is not a hard task. Seeing that the Disney film with similar plot such as Dick Tracy didn't work, this certainly has something special. What matters most is the course of the story, the amazing visual style, and the fun coming from it. The film has both the merriness and the weight of the characters mixed up everywhere. There is no need of looking for some philosphical message. Most importantly, it showed the best of the entertainment film that everyone can laugh and enjoy.

This film was a spectuacular hit in the box office. A record amount of money at that time was poured into the film and it managed to earn more than five times of the budget.

The production team is magnificent too. The directors are already known to us, yet there are also producers like Frank Marshall, Robert Watts with great people such as Spielberg, Jeffrey Kitchenbugger. The music is composed by Alan Sylvestri, who was the composer behind Romancing the Stone and Back to the Future, and he does an excellent job at recreating the music in old black-and-whie detective films. Even Judge Doom is played by Chistopher Lloyd, the Dr. Brown of Back to the Future.

This is a film like a gift basket with numerous contents, and this is the masterpiece only seen in Hollywood. These films provide us with reasons for us not to underestimate Hollywood. Robert Zemeckis, who gave us Back to the Future and Forest Gump, is memoralbe with this film alone.