A real "Breeze!" to watch over and over!

Rating: 10/10 (23 November 2018)

This is for the kid in all of us, those who grew up with cartoons as part of our movie going in the 1930's, 40's and 50's, and in my case, grew up watching the Saturday morning line-up that automatically featured two hours of "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner" show. It will take more than one viewing to catch all of the famous cartoon characters who appear in this film, mostly ones from the early sound era (in the public domain most likely) and those from Warner Brothers and Disney. This is a mixture of animation and film noir, with the human characters and cartoon characters mixing together as if they were part of the same world, although the presence of an area of the Hollywood Hills known as "Toon Town" makes the cartoon character's world seem "segregated'. The film stars Bob Hoskins as a cynical private detective down to the last threads of an agency, desperate for a case, practically any case, but not one preferably concerning "toons", as his brother was killed by a "toon", which has stereotyped most toons in his book (with the exception of Betty Boop perhaps) as bad.
The film opens with a hysterical spoof of the Warner Brothers cartoons with Roger Rabbit the baby sitter for a cookie craving toddler who endangers Roger's life simply by crawling out of his high chair while Roger isn't looking. After this, we learn the truth about "toon actors" (he's a 50 year old toon with a 3 month old "dinkie", the actor playing the baby garbles), and then get to meet Roger's wife, Jessica, an animated film noir vixen who sings like Amy Irving but talks like Kathleen Turner. Is Jessica a murderous femme fatale who killed off toon town owner Stubby Kaye? Or is she an innocent patty caker who is just content to stay at home and make Roger a carrot cake? As we learn from Betty Boop, work has been hard for some toons ever since cartoons went to color, and the fact that Jessica is the lucky one because Roger Rabbit is a huge star. The dueling Daffy and Donald Duck piano playing sequence proves that not all ducks come from the same pot and that not all of them cackle or squawk in a practically un-hearable manner.
Then, there's the evil darkly dressed judge (Christopher Lloyd) who seems to somehow be a distant relative of Disney's evil queens, sorceresses and stepmothers, obsessed with destroying toon town because of his creation of some obscure traveling idea called "a freeway". "Billboards as far as the eye can see!", Lloyd proclaims, and in order to get this through the valley, he needs to destroy toon town, and that means stopping anybody who can get ahold of Kaye's will. His crew of evil howling hyena henchmen will do anything for either a laugh or a quick buck, and as the audience learns, they literally have the ability to laugh themselves to death.
Where there's a femme fatale in film noir, there's also the tired, big hearted waitress, and here, it's Hoskins' long suffering girlfriend, Joanna Cassidy. While Jessica is an animated Rita Hayworth style character, Cassidy is a modern day compilation of Joan Blondell, Ann Sheridan or Alice Faye who essayed that archetype throughout the 1930's and 40's. The details here are fabulous with references to many aspects of the entertainment world of the 1940's, even a reference to the invisible rabbit Harvey. The most popular animated rabbit of all time, Bugs Bunny, does appear, paired with the single most popular mouse in animation history, Mickey. To see these two legendary characters together is ingenious, right after Hoskins encounters a "piggy picking" Tweety Bird. Of course, with energy lacking dog Droopy as the elevator pooch, Hoskins already has his hands full when he enters this toon town apartment building.
This film created a huge buzz in 1988, having long runs in its premiere and filling up the massive Cinerama Dome on Sunset Blvd. for weeks. Several cartoon short sequels followed, but unfortunately, there was never a sequel, with director Robert Zemickis realizing perhaps there was no way he could top this, so why try? Thirty years after its premiere, it holds up as a classic in every way, with the mixture of animation and live action superb and the 1940's atmosphere brilliant. Even a haunting musical score by Alan Silvestri makes you feel like you've driven into a time tunnel. There are few films that are absolutely perfect, and this would certainly be in most people's top 10 listing of films that are. Whether you are a return viewer to this film for the umpeenth time (and get teary-eyed over the nostalgia that it brings back) or a first time young viewer out to find out why this is so brilliant, it is guaranteed to bring on a smile, many a laugh, and certainly for first time viewers, become a film you will want to revisit again and again...and again.