Cartoon Noir

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2004)

This was such an amazing piece of work when it came out. I just saw it again, and it was just a bit dated. But while the physical part of mixing cartoon and live action was excellent, the best part was the writing, the envisioning of a world where interactions between "toons" and humans were commonplace. Fantastic work by Bob Hoskins, particularly in losing his English accent and sounding completely like a bitter, hard-boiled, mid-40's, SoCal, PI. Most of the time, when an actor fakes an accent, it will bleed through a bit in some scenes. One could blame the director for this, not being willing to take enough takes to make sure that he never has to use one that doesn't sound right. But Hoskins was utterly Streepian here.

Interesting that some felt there were themes of racism and genocide in this movie. OK, I guess the genocide angle is fairly explicit, except that it never really occurred to me because the "toons" weren't seen as human. (Although now that I think about it, the weasels were depicted as having souls) But it's just too much of a stretch to see "toons" as being analogous to "coons". I cannot imagine Disney or Zemeckis going there at all. "Toons" were, in this film, gently treated as subhuman, simply because they WERE subhuman, and nobody was interested in denying that reality out of some sort of cartoon political correctness.
Anyway, this film is a masterpiece, even if a silly one, and it comes highly recommended by me. Grade: A