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Who Framed Roger Rabbit

T

t_smitts

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
For no particular reason, I pulled out my blu-ray copy of this film. It holds up amazingly well. If you listen to the commentary and watch the special features, you start to understand what a monstrous undertaking this was and what a huge risk it was for the studio.

It wasn't just inserting animated characters in live action scenes. Roger and the other "toons" pick up and manipulate objects (i.e. Baby Herman's cigar), so they had to build animatronic puppets to hold the objects, which would be superimposed with the toons later.

Direct Robert Zemeckis really praises Bob Hoskins' work, making you believe he sees the crazy toon action that Eddie Valiant sees, and that he's actually picking up something with weight when he grabs Roger by the ears. He was even sent to mime school to perfect this.

Charles Fleischer, the voice of Roger, was physically on set for all the scene with Roger, saying his lines just off camera, and dressed in a rabbit costume! (Lou Hirsch, the voice of Baby Herman apparently elected not to walk around in a diaper).

 
I enjoy the zaniness of this movie, and the old-timey setting. Some aspects may seem a little too wacky, but I don't know how else it could have been done. :shrug:

Kor
 
t_smitts said:
Direct Robert Zemeckis really praises Bob Hoskins' work, making you believe he sees the crazy toon action that Eddie Valiant sees, and that he's actually picking up something with weight when he grabs Roger by the ears. He was even sent to mime school to perfect this.
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If I'm not mistaken, Hoskins actually spent a significant amount of time suffering from paranoid delusions after he finished the film, because he had spent the better part of a year pretending to act with non-existent co-stars.
 
Timby said:
If I'm not mistaken, Hoskins actually spent a significant amount of time suffering from paranoid delusions after he finished the film, because he had spent the better part of a year pretending to act with non-existent co-stars.
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That would be too bad. Hoskins did an amazing job, and really sold interacting with toons. This was probably the world's one and only chance to see all these animated icons from multiple studios all together, interacting with each other, in a single film. I watched it again recently with my teenage kids, and we all still laughed in all the right places...
 
t_smitts said:
Maybe you just don't like Spielberg movies.
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Yeah, I came to that conclusion a while ago, but this one was only partially his, and I do like the Indy's and Jurassic Parks. And surprisingly Tintin.

Can't say I'm fond of much else by him though.
 
It's a fun movie as well as a technical tour de force. I can ignore the historical inaccuracy of Judge Doom planning to build the Pasadena Freeway in 1947 -- the freeway had already been up and running since 1940.
 
scotpens said:
It's a fun movie as well as a technical tour de force. I can ignore the historical inaccuracy of Judge Doom planning to build the Pasadena Freeway in 1947 -- the freeway had already been up and running since 1940.
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True, but perhaps it didn't take off until the automobile companies and related industries conspired to get the trolley system shut down, in order to force people to drive, which is actually what happened, according to the director and producers on the commentary track.

Some other things I noted:

-Eddie's girl Dolores was also T'Pol's mom.

-Kathleen Turner was something like nine months pregnant when she voiced Jessica.

-There's a deleted scene where Doom and the weasels catch Eddie snooping around Jessica's dressing room and "rough him up" but taking him into Toontown and somehow drawing a toon pig head over his own head. He runs home screaming and washes it off in the shower with turpentine. That's where he was supposed to come out of the bathroom and find Jessica there. I wish they'd kept that in. They put in sort of a choppy insert shot of Jessica entering instead, which I don't think is as good.

-How come nobody says anything about Doom getting involved in the investigation of a crime, pursuing the suspect, and openly talking about executing him, none of which are part of a judge's job?
 
scotpens said:
I can ignore the historical inaccuracy of Judge Doom planning to build the Pasadena Freeway in 1947 -- the freeway had already been up and running since 1940.
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That's in our world. In their world it wasn't. :)



I love WFRR, and I'm so glad it was made when it was. In my opinion it would have suffered to have been earlier or later. Too much earlier and the technical advancements that help make the movie what it is would likely not have been possible. Any later, Mel Blanc would have been dead.
 
Tosk said:
I love WFRR, and I'm so glad it was made when it was. In my opinion it would have suffered to have been earlier or later. Too much earlier and the technical advancements that help make the movie what it is would likely not have been possible. Any later, Mel Blanc would have been dead.
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More than that: it revived interest at Disney in hand-drawn animation and led to the Disney Renaissance.

To put it simply, without Roger Rabbit, there probably would've been no Lion King!
 
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