Movie: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988)
Most of the time special effects are used to visualise something supernatural or extraordinary that cannot exist in the real world, in films that take place in a world unlike ours or in a disrupted version of our world. Robert Zemeckis, in his best films, uses special effects to make our ordinary world seem weirder by bringing together recognisable elements which would otherwise not be able to exist next to each other. The scene in Back to the Future Part II, where Marty goes back to the past to see himself playing Chuck Berry at the prom (one of my favorite moments in any film) is a great example of this. So are the scenes where Forrest Gump meets Elvis and Nixon. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Zemeckis combines these two approaches to special effects. A hard-boiled 'live-action' detective in 1940's Los Angeles interacts with animated, hand-drawn, cartoons from 'Toontown'. Some of these 'toons' such as Roger Rabbit and his wife Jessica are created especially for the film, others are the familiar characters from Disney's earliest films and from The Looney Tunes. In Toontown Daffy Duck and Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny interact with each other. Both the live-action and the animated elements are 'recognisable' on their own, but by combining them together the film presents a world that's completely unlike ours.
The effect is often quite spectacular. The idea here is that these animated characters are drawn to be directed by 'real' film directors. In of the first scenes we see a 'real' film set in which the camera is pointed towards an animated stage on which Roger Rabbit, one of the biggest stars of Toontown, is climbing out of a fridge that has fallen on him with little birds circling around his head. The director is mad at him, because the script called for stars to circle around his head. The animated stage and the film set (of course the scene makes sure to show both elements as much as possible together in the same frame) are so well integrated with each other that you never get the impression that these are two separate spaces or two different worlds. In a later scene, Zemeckis adds another element to the proceedings when he brings detective Valiant to a bar where he is served drinks by the penguins from Mary Poppins, while he watches Daffy and Donald have a piano duel. There he meets Betty Boop, who is drawn in black and white, while all the the other animated characters are in color and Valiant is played by the 'real' Bob Hoskins.
What makes the achievement of Who Framed Roger Rabbit even more impressive is that it, to my knowledge, has inspired very few copycats. Space Jam would be the most obvious example, but even that made a much clearer distinction between the animated parts and the live action parts (and was far less funny). Of course, it didn't help that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was apparently the most expensive film of the 1980's and that it came out only 7 years before Pixar released Toy Story, accelerating the transition towards computer drawn animation. That is not necessarily progress. I would take almost any Looney Tunes short over almost any Pixar film. In fact, I would also take the Looney Tunes over Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
What makes the Looney Tunes, the early Disney shorts, Tom & Jerry, etc so great is their directness and their simplicity. They are defined by Bugs Bunny nonchalantly eating a carrot, while his hunters are powerless to catch him. Or by Tom repeatedly hitting himself with a rake. Or by Road Runner humiliating the coyote only with a "Meep Meep". Most of the magic is in how slight and uncomplicated the 'stories' and drawings are. The technical virtuosity of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, no matter how impressive, is ultimately in opposition to that nonchalant, casual quality and the film never truly manages to capture the effortless cool of Bugs and co. It tries a bit too hard, best exemplified by Bob Hoskins' dance scene near the end of the film. It's also filled with many (often genuinely funny) sexual innuendos, double entendres, film references and inside jokes, trading the universal appeal of these cartoons for the love of a highly specific group of film nerds.
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