Lightning in a bottle

Rating: 10/10 (14 June 2020)

That WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT was made at all is a marvel to me-- I'm sure getting all the studios that owned these characters to agree to let them all on the screen was a real feat-- but I have no doubt it was made at just the right time in movie history. The 80s saw an upswing in interest in the classic Hollywood animations of the 30s and 40s, and the 70s nostalgia for classic noir was still lingering, leading to classics like BODY HEAT. Somehow, this led to a perfect combination of ideas. The special effects technology of the 1980s also allowed the fusion of live action and animation to be done in a manner far more sophisticated than past decades.
So yeah, I consider ROGER RABBIT a great film. The story is both a spoof of noir conventions and a dramatic story you can take just seriously enough, populated by memorable and endearing characters. Everyone does great work, but you have to give it to Bob Hoskins, who toes the line between comedy and hardboiled drama well. It's often described as a kid's movie, though with the sheer amount of sexual jokes and extreme cartoon violence, I am shocked some moral watchdog has yet to complain (at least, I've never heard of anyone complaining about this movie's content, not even from those who think things like HAPPY FEET and HARRY POTTER were directed by Satan himself).
The idea of a sequel was in talks for a few years, but to be real, I am glad they never came to be. In our age of rehashes and reboots and sequels twenty to thirty years after the fact, it's been proven repeatedly that you just can't re-catch lightning in a bottle.