Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1947 Los Angeles, and the human world exists alongside the world of cartoon characters of Disney and Warner Bros, and Maroon Studios.
Eddie Valiant is hired by Maroon studios boss, RK Maroon, to spy on Jessica Rabbit the wife of one of his stars, Roger Rabbit following Roger’s poor performance.
Eddie discovers that Jessica has been playing “Patty Cake” with Marvin Acme, the boss of Acme Corp. Eddie informs Roger. The following day Acme is found dead – and Roger is the prime suspect.
Direction
Amazing and perfect direction by Robert Zemeckis. The on screen combination between real life people and the cartoon world is impeccable.
The neo noir like 1947 is exactly how you would imagine, almost like out of a pulp novel. then with the colourful zany world of “Toon Town” where all the toon’s live, which is the polar opposite of the true world, is just perfection.
Cast/Characters
Bob Hoskins plays Eddie. He seems to be having a blast. He did so many movies for kids in this time of his life!
Christopher Lloyd plays Judge Doom, the anti-toon, primary antagonist of the film, right from the moment he is introduced on screen.
Joanna Cassidy plays Dolores, Eddie’s long time girlfriend.
Charles Fleischer plays the voice of Roger Rabbit.
Amy Irving is credited, as she provided the singing voice for Jessica, while Kathleen Turner provides her speaking voice and is uncredited.
Breakdown
Starting with a era specific cartoon of Roger Rabbit’s babysitting ‘short’ – that ends abruptly and jolts the audience into a world where humans live alongside cartoons. This is where we meet Roger, Eddie etc.
At a tight 99m, the backdrop of 1947 LA has a neo noir like feel to it – with Valiant being the alcoholic, hard boiled detective. He has suffered a great loss, once being the cop the toon’s turned too when they were in need, and now hates them because “a toon dropped a piano on his brothers head”. In any other film – a comment like this would be a comment that would be completely ludicrous – but here – it works.
The narrative is surprisingly sound, and has a good flow, with Eddie reluctantly agreeing to discover ‘who framed Roger Rabbit’.
This leads to the discovery of the conglomerate company Cloverleaf – who want to buy Toon Town, after taking over several businesses throughout the film.
Jessica Rabbit also becomes a femme fatale – even though she is animated (it’s not her fault, she was drawn that way!)
The blend of Warner Bros, and Disney, had never been done before, and still hasn’t. Cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny sharing the screen with Mickey Mouse – or the hilarious piano sequence with Donald and Daffy Duck.
*** Spoiler *** It has been almost 40 years ***
Christopher Lloyd’s Judge Doom, who is shown to hate toon’s throughout the film. From his first introduction he has is
revealed to be not only the owner of Cloverleaf – but also a toon himself, and the one that killed Eddie’s brother! His revelation, and eventual ‘toon’ reveal is genuinely scary – and while it might be not as much in a 2025 climate, it was so in 1988.
Score/Soundtrack
I loved Alan Silvestri’s noir like score. How he has not been more recognised or rewarded throughout his career is criminal!
Overall
Absolutely fantastic blend of real life/cartoon that for some reason just works.
Great performances from Hoskins and Lloyd, and voice cast members Fleischer, Turner and Irving.
This still holds up the same as an almost 42 year old as it did when I was a 5 year old on its release.
4.5/5
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