Spoiled by poor treatment of the bastardized classic characters.

Rating: 8/10 (16 September 2009)

This movie introduced and was focused on a new animated character Roger Rabbit. However, the selling point of this movie was the inclusion of tons of characters from previously competing cartoon franchises. The movie was much more a display of the Disney Company flexing its muscles in regards to it's business-level victory over its competition and to show its current financial dominance over the various animation companies from animation's Golden Age. So we have Daffy Duck in piano playing competition on the same screen with Donald Duck! What makes this extremely annoying is taking characters such as Daffy with such an established rich history of character development. Here in Roger Rabbit, Daffy is just a "daffy duck" playing a piano. My expectations were to see DAFFY DUCK playing a piano along with all that that implies. WFRR's daffy duck was similar to the early black and white Daffy Duck during the Leon Schlesinger time of Looney Tunes. I certainly enjoy the Looney Tunes of Schlesinger's era but it certainly does not represent the rich character that Daffy developed into. And even then Daffy still had more personality then just being 'daffy' as presented here. We also have my all-time favorite cartoon character Droopy being poorly drawn not at all faithful to Tex Avery's character just appearing for a second in a stupid cameo to give a line that was presented in a way also unfaithful to Droopy's established personality. We have a slew of these cameos from Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse, etc. None of which showed any respect to these characters but were obviously Disney showing its financial might in having the rights to use these characters. Not that WFRR didn't do the same with Disney characters. Not being a big fan of Disney animation, I didn't mind as much. I guess I can consider the possibility that WFRR did not mean to purposefully sell the borrowed characters short. It shows a difference in the focus of the different cartoon franchises. Disney animation focuses much more on story and technical artistry of the features. In contrast to Disney was Warner Brothers and MGM. While the artistry was superior to Disney it was in a less intricate and focused on style instead of technically grand design of Disney. However, the most dividing difference in Disney and WB/MGM animation was Disney showed little interest in establishing characters. WB/MGM were almost entirely focused on making characters. In other words, Disney character's personalities were designed to serve the story. WB/MGM's stories were designed to serve the characters. That is where WFRR offends, we have all these great characters just appearing randomly at best but usually contrary to character. This movie really should have had only the Roger Rabbit story in it. It really wasn't that bad. In fact, it was good. The animation was fine. The story was funny and enhanced by the gags (only the ones by WFRR original characters). As for Roger Rabbit himself, he's made for this movie which is fine. But he's not a character that is interesting in himself outside of his place in this movie. Nothing wrong with that. It would have been an enjoyable movie if left at that. The poor treatment of classic characters really caused me to dislike this film.