Product: Who Framed Roger Rabbit [VHS] (1988)
Rating: 5.0
Finally, a comprehensive DVD on Roger Rabbit!
If you haven't seen Roger Rabbit, it's probably because you weren't alive when this movie was first released in 1988. An incredible live-action and animation combination, containing special effects never before attempted in any film, Roger Rabbit took the country by storm and became the must-see hit of the summer. But things weren't so rosy prior to it's release. In fact, Robert Zemeckis claims people were literally walking out of the theater during the initial test screening.If there was ever a movie that could fill a DVD with extras, it would be this one. Unfortunately, the first DVD release of Roger Rabbit was woefully lacking of additional material. I was going to knock a star off in sympathy for the fans who have to buy this movie twice, but I notice Touchstone offers a five dollar rebate for the "upgrade." So what do you get? Well this edition contains two DVD's containing Roger Rabbit in Fullscreen and Widescreen edition plus the following supplementary material:1) A simultaneous split-screen before and after featurette of the scene where Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) falls off the skyscraper and meets Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse on the way down.2) A deleted scene dubbed "Pig Head" where Eddie is captured by Toons and released with a giant pig head drawn over him. His only way out, a long shower with a bucket of turpentine to scrub off and wash his animated attachment down the drain.3) A featurette explaining the use of plastic puppets as stand-ins for the animation and voice acting from Charles Fleischer (Roger Rabbit) and others to give the impression of realism Hoskins could use during filming. Hoskins even went to mime school to learn techniques that would give them impression of throwing 60lbs of weight around, for instance, when all he was doing was moving air. If the judges saw the amount of work Hoskins had go through in order to act and react to these invisible characters, he probably would've won the best actor oscar for the year. Less understandable, is Fleischer's odd insistence on wearing a Roger Rabbit costume throughout the taping. Lou Hirsch (the voice of Baby Herman) refused to wear a diaper.4) A well done documentary of the making of Roger Rabbit including interviews with director Robert Zemeckis, Bob Hoskins, Charles Fleischer, and the animation and visual effects crew. Words and phrases like "survivor," and "hardest movie ever" become commonplace. SFX house Industrial Light and Magic needed to create over 1000 visual effects shots for Roger Rabbit. Prior to this, the most they ever did was 300 for Return of the Jedi. Long before CGI animation became commonplace, all animation in Roger Rabbit was hand-drawn, right down to the individual frame and a good portion of the interview is devoted to the trials and tribulations the animators went through.Additional material includes the Roger Rabbit shorts that appeared in conjunction with other movies back in the 80's, a DVD game, and a THX optimizer to help dial in your home theater system. The companion booklet isn't much, just brief descriptions of what's on the different DVD's, but you also get autographed headshots of Roger and Jessica Rabbit (total babe!)The menus are intuitive (hosted by Benny the Cab), but I couldn't move up and down the different selections to pick my choice. I don't know if it was a problem with my particular DVD player but the best I could do was select by number, which was problematic as the selections weren't numbered. In spite of this glitch, the "Vista Series" release of Roger Rabbit is a comprehensive collection for fans of the movie as well as movie-making in general. They got it right the second time around.