Official Synopsis
It’s 1947 Hollywood and Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), a down-on-his-luck detective, is hired to find proof that Marvin Acme, gag factory mogul and owner of Toontown, is playing hanky-panky with femme fatale Jessica Rabbit, wife of Maroon Cartoon superstar, Roger Rabbit. When Acme is found murdered, all fingers point to Roger, who begs the Toon-hating Valiant to find the real evildoer.
What a fun film to watch, even after 25 years. Still impressive to this day, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of the finer examples of animation and real life mixed together, and done right, in one film. Not since Don Knott’s The Incredible Mr. Limpet has Hollywood done animation and life action so well. Of course, you can thank executive producer Steven Spielberg and direct Robert Zemeckis for planning out how this film was going to go. Using stand-ins, on-set voice acting, and picking the right lead to take the imaginary falls when he is asked to (Bob Hoskins did a great job with physical comedy) probably helped quite a bit. What’s even more interesting about this film is how it led future special effects artists to expand upon and create new methods for actors to interact with things that weren’t yet on set (see Star Wars prequels for example). Maybe Zemeckis and Spielberg didn’t event the exact methodology, but they sure showed how well it could be done with a little planning and the right actors.
Back to the movie, though.
One of the best parts about Who Framed Roger Rabbit is that it was suitable for both adults and kids. While you will find moments where you might have to ‘ear muff’ your child (Baby Herman scenes), there’s enough slapstick comedy and familiar faces in the film that kids will love it. On the flip side to that, this isn’t a boring cartoon for adults, as most adults not only find ‘adult’ humor in the dialogue (patty-cake scene for starters), but also an intriguing murder mystery that will keep the movie interesting. That’s really the unpolished charm of the film, and it’s tough to do when you’re presenting this as an animated feature (and the advertising/marketing was a bit innocent when it was done).
What I absolutely love about this movie is how it’s incredibly balanced. You get a wonderful beginning that sets up the fall for Roger Rabbit. All fingers point to Roger as our second act begins, which just really gives the film some kickstart. Once the chase starts and Eddie/Roger are trying to hide until they can unravel the mystery, it really doesn’t ever stop. By the time act three starts rolling in, and things begin to unravel, you are just as surprised and shocked as the characters are in the film by the great reveal. It’s a perfectly balanced script that doesn’t have any slowdown points, rather it just keeps going. That balance that it provides is what gives this film plenty of replay value, and a big reason why after 25 years that it’s still memorable. It also gives some fantastic homage to serial murder mystery films from the 40s/50s.
If you haven’t seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit then it’s probably time to rent or buy this and give it a go. It really does survive the 25 years remarkably well.
With that said, the Blu-ray conversion is a mixed bag. There are plenty of gorgeous scenes in the film that show you how will the film transferred over to HD, but there are also moments where it looks a little rough. Starting with the positives, the sunny shots of the outside world, such as when Eddie is taking a ride on the rail at the beginning, the HD shines through and through. You get a lot of colors like yellow, red and brown that stand out in these shots. You get almost no graininess or artifacts in the picture. Nothing that shows that the film was transferred up to HD. The flip side to that coin is when Eddie or Roger are in the nighttime or darker shots. For example, when Roger is just finding out about his wife playing patty-cake with Acme, there are a lot of graininess moments in the office scene, as well as artifacts. I’m not quite sure what the compression issue was with the darker scenes, but they stand out pretty well, sadly. The film could have used a bit more TLC during the cleaning process, but it didn’t get it. Now, during the mostly indoors scenes where the majority of it rules with animation, that looks sharp. The end fight scene especially looks good, but not perfect. I’ll take good over bad any day of the week.
The audio does come to you in Dolby Digital 5.1 and the aspect ratio of the film is 1.85:1.
Finally, as for features, here’s what you should expect:
– Who Made Roger Rabbit
– Audio Commentary
– “Toontown Confidential”
– Deleted Scenes
– “Before and After”
– “Behind the Ears: The True Story of Roger Rabbit”
– “Toon Stand-ins”
– On Set Benny the Cab
While some of these have been seen before, there are still some good features to be had. The audio commentary is gold. The Before and After featurette is very fascinating. The deleted scene with the ‘pig head’ is sort of alarming. I won’t ruin it for you, but despite what Zemeckis thinks, I’m really glad that it was left out. I couldn’t imagine my kids watching that scene. The Behind the Ears featurette is really strong, as is the On Set Benny the Cab featurette. There’s plenty here to extend the film behind its point. While I didn’t care much for the sporadic nature of the ‘Who Made Roger Rabbit’ featurette, I did find it interesting when it was briefly discussed how things were done during filming to help out the animation process. It was very ahead of its time.
