Movie Review – Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
Written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman
Directed by Robert Zemeckis

There will never be a film like this one again. Warner Bros. and Disney allowing their characters on screen together makes it a rare event. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was a celebration of classic American animation, both in the characters featured but also in animation legend Richard Williams overseeing that part of the production. Watching it now as an adult, it is surprisingly straightforward. It follows the noir genre closely with its plot while letting the tone be set by the zany premise. The story takes place over two days, and there’s never a lull; the pacing keeps us moving along with the characters, leading up to a very memorable conclusion.

In a world where humans and toons live side-by-side, we follow Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), a private eye. He’s watching Los Angeles go through many transformations in 1947, but nothing altered his life more than the murder of his brother and business partner. A new case calls into Eddie’s lap; studio owner R.K. Maroon believes his top star, Roger (Charles Fleischer), is down in the dumps because his wife, Jessica (Kathleen Turner), is having an affair. Eddie is hired to snap some photos for Maroon to show Roger, convince him to leave the broad, and get refocused on his acting career. Jessica is entertaining Marvin Acme, the owner of ToonTown, in her dressing room at the club where she performs nightly. Eddie gets the snapshots, but then Acme turns up dead, and Roger is the top suspect. It’s up to Eddie to get to the bottom of things, protecting Roger and avoiding the wrath of Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd).

Robert Zemeckis was a prominent film innovator at the time, starting with Back to the Future. This was his follow-up the year before Back to the Future Part II came out, and you can see him pushing the boundaries of practical effects. Animated characters interact with physical objects and people throughout this film, and for the most part, it is flawless. There were a couple moments where they tried to capture Jessica Rabbit in three dimensions in her introduction, where she looked distorted & strange, but overall, the effects are still incredible. There’s never a point where I felt like Eddie wasn’t actually talking to and interacting with Roger and the other toons. That’s both a compliment to the animators, special effects people, and Hoskin’s performance.

The Daffy & Donald piano battle is one of those incredible feats, with the cartoon characters appearing to actually press the keys and cause mayhem and destruction on stage. When toons spit out water, it’s real. When Baby Herman smokes a cigar, it’s a real cigar with real smoke. The way Zemeckis and his special effects wizards hide the wires and tricks is masterful. Very quickly, we believe in this world, and that’s something incredible that only a strong filmmaker can pull off. 

This isn’t a kids’ film despite the colorful cartoon characters. I watched it as a kid but didn’t fully get all the innuendos and jokes. The obvious one is Jessica Rabbit and her oversexualized persona. There’s a lot of other visual gags and puns throughout. It feels like the kind of movie that, if they made it now, would either be sanitized to the point of being dull or made so vulgar that it was slapped with an R-rating. There was something about the 1980s where they made these PG and PG-13 movies that knew just how to walk that line, still being quality without being so dirty that the family couldn’t watch it. 

I greatly appreciated the simplicity of the story. It hits all the noir beats you might expect but keeps us on our toes due to the toon element. There are some obvious nods to other noir works. Chinatown feels very obvious concerning Judge Doom’s plans for ToonTown. But there’s a sprinkle of all sorts of similar films. Regarding Judge Doom, it was refreshing that the film never sought to give us a lengthy backstory on him. If this was made today, we’d have thirty minutes centered on Doom and how he became a judge, likely some spotlight scene where he gets a monologue. Instead, he’s just the villain driving the plot forward. Lloyd doesn’t have a hefty role, but you will remember every scene he is in.

I don’t think many films are better than Roger Rabbit when blending genres. The noir storyline and the silly comedy are balanced, so neither overshadows the other. There’s no detached, ironic comedy here; everything serves the story and shows how every actor is committed to their role. You can see that in Back to the Future, one of the best comedy-adventure movies ever made. When it’s funny, it’s hilarious, and it never hesitates when it needs to be serious and play up the darker elements. 

Roger Rabbit was part of an animation renaissance in the 1990s. It came just around The Little Mermaid’s release, revitalizing Disney’s animation department. Warner would also build up steam on television with programs like Batman: The Animated Series and Animaniacs. American animation had been centered around selling toys and other products for a good decade or more. Cartoons were advertisements for these things. Roger Rabbit reminds us of an era where cartoon characters were funny toons people watched for a laugh. Budgets would go up, and animators who genuinely loved the form would get opportunities they had never had.

It wouldn’t last forever. By the early 2000s, we entered a new era of animation as digital tools became more advanced. It could be argued that the classic animation revival sparked by Roger Rabbit ended with the box office success of Toy Story. After that, U.S. studios put more money into computer animation and mostly abandoned the cel animation format except for special occasions. This film is worth revisiting if it’s been a while for you. It’s such an extraordinary anomaly that we’ll never see again. Disney tried with Chip N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers a few years ago, but that had more allusions to famous animated characters outside of Disney’s pool than Roger Rabbit gave us. Just one of the most unique neo-noir films ever made.