34 years ago, a movie happened that was unlike any other movie in so many ways, and it’s actually pretty amazing that it exists. You’ve seen the title, no point in being coy. I’m talking about Who Framed Roger Rabbit, produced by Stephen Spielberg, directed by Bobby Zemeckis, and filled by so much other talent, it’s ridiculous.
I’ve been spending a significant amount of time talking about this movie. In fact, I’ve been spending a significant amount of time discussing every single minute of the film. No joke. I’m doing a podcast where we discuss it one minute at a time.
But here I want to record exactly why I’m positing that it’s such an amazing film. And aside from being amazing, it’s engaging, and unpredictable, and also really really weird.
There’s reasons that go way beyond these–the technical achievements, the great acting, the super tight screenplay– but I’ll dive into the three main reasons why I think it’s such a unique film experience that separates it from most every other movie ever made..
Unlocking imagination
If the 70’s were a time for gritty realness in movies and the 90’s were a time for attitude, then the 80’s were a time for balls to the wall weirdness.
This is a decade that gave us Return to Oz, Back to the Future, Peewee’s Big Adventure, Labyrinth, Little Shop of Horrors, and Howard the Duck. While half of these are nightmare inducing, I think we can all be on board with the fact that everyone of these come from, as Willy Wonka might say, a place of imagination. Especially living in a current era where almost every movie comes from a franchise of safe/well-known IP, an era that produces a movie where a teenager time travels and makes his mom fall in love with him, or the ultimate arrested developed man travels to the Alamo in search of his stolen bike are beyond creative.
And this movie fits right in. When it came out, partly due to marketing and partly due to the way people viewed cartoons, it was thought of as a kids cartoon movie with a live-action detective story added in. Still interesting, but that description most definitely is not accurate.
It is a gritty detective story that just so happens to take place in an alternative universe where cartoons are real.
If that’s not bizarre, I don’t know what is.
There’s something so special about a movie that’s unafraid to be weird. And this is based off of the novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit by Gary K Wolf, which is very similar except it was comic characters instead of cartoons. Gary had said he had a hard time selling the book because it didn’t fit into any genre.
And like with great art, this movie does the same, not limiting itself and working from imagination instead of safety. Safety might produce guaranteed revenue, but it’s imagination that produces art. Imagination is what led to the greatest cinematic art from Citizen Kane to Fantasia.
And this movie, with its willingness to be as bold as the book, is in every way, shape and form art.
Come together
You may know that I am all about people coming together. Maybe my soul is way too hippie, kumbaya, but I do truly feel that the more we come together, the better of a world we can create.
And this movie completely embodies this idea, leaving us feeling a better, more connective experience by the end.
And it does so in a couple of ways.
In one way is the literal bringing together of animation and live action. It’s not the first movie to do so. Mary Poppins, Pete’s Dragon, Song of the South, and The Incredible Mr. Limpett just to name a few have all done this before. Even many of the first cartoon shorts, before sound was even a thing, like The Out of the Inkwell Series and Walt Disney’s pre-Mickey Alice Comedies, in the early 20’s did this.
The difference is that this is the first movie that created the full shared experience between the live action and the animation. Roger interacts with the real world, just as Eddie interacts with the animated world when he’s in Toon Town. But also, the Toons and live action characters will interact with the same objects, from tugging on a jacket to being handcuffed together. Shadows and weight of real objects will affect the animated characters.
And, of course, the whole lesson is about Toons and humans coming together.
Another way this movie is about unity is behind the scenes. One of the reasons that the movie would never exist today is because companies are so damn stingy with their intellectual property. DC is probably not crossing paths with Marvel anytime soon, and neither is Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.
Disney, Warner Brothers, and all the other animation studios involved in this movie were the same way. Both the main two studios had famous cartoon ducks, but we never thought that they could share a screen together, much less have the most epic of all dueling piano fights.
Enter Steven Spielberg. Spielberg is the man who convinced these various rival studios to come together and put their properties into this movie. There was a lot of negotiating, but they trusted him and they did this. It might have been at the exact perfect timing, as he was in the hottest spot in his career, not too long after ET, Jaws, Poltergeist and Back to the Future, but he was the magician that brought them together.
I am convinced this is part of the reason a sequel might not ever happen in cinematic form. If they can have the same universe of shared property, it would be a gigantic step down.
Unsafe for kids
As mentioned this is not a kid’s movie.
That’s not to say that kids wouldn’t enjoy the film. They will. I loved it when I was a kid (and not to date myself too much, but I did see it in the theaters). It has engrossing characters, fun jokes, great visuals. They just won’t understand anything that is happening in it.
This is a reflection of the cartoons from the Golden Age (the 20’s through the start of the 50’s). Cartoons were thought of as something kids would enjoy; however, there was not the idea that they were specifically made for children. They were put in the same category as Chaplin and Keaton films were it was expected that anyone at any age would be into them.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, doesn’t just take the characters from the golden age, it takes this philosophy. There’s nothing about it that’s dumbed down.
Which is part of its charm. It doesn’t aim to dumb itself down so it can be for kids.
It allows itself to be what it is and kids can take it or leave it.
And maybe I’m just speaking for what I enjoyed as a kid, but I do not think that dumbing down is what kids want. They just want something that they can enjoy, and most enjoy something that makes them feel older. Likewise, I believe adults want something that can speak to the child in them.
With that, this movie is truly for everyone.
I go into all of these reasons along with many more on the podcast–minute by minute by minute.
Sometimes thinking about a movie this much can ruin the experience, but I feel like this one, it goes the opposite way. I have an even bigger appreciation for it.
What I hope is I can make a great, thoughtful experience for listeners.
But what I also hope is that we can have movies like this one again. Just because we’re stuck in an era with movies that are safe bets, we’re at least opening the options with streaming and with some original works (Everything, Everywhere All at Once for example) coming through.
We still have room for imagination and unity and making things that without any specific age in mind. We can still create work that doesn't fit into any genre or bucket.
And, in the meantime, I have an upcoming 104 episodes of a podcast that I can recommend to you…
Check out the podcast here.
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