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Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a movie that combines animation and live action, and is a unique chance to see many
cartoons from different studios in a single film. It was one of the last star turns for Mel Blanc and other voice actors of animation's Golden Era
before they died. The film is set in a fictionalized Los Angeles in the 1940s, where animated characters live
alongside humans in the real world, most of them working as actors in cartoons. It is based on the book Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf.
Plot
Warning: Plot details
follow.
Roger Rabbit, a cartoon star ("toon"), is accused of murdering his
friend Marvin Acme because he played pattycake with Roger's wife Jessica Rabbit (voiced by an unbilled Kathleen Turner). The only person who can help clear his name is Eddie
Valiant (Bob Hoskins), a detective who hates "toons" because one killed his
brother a long time ago.
It just so happens that Judge Doom and The Weasels have killed Marvin Acme and RK Maroon and Eddie's Brother. A subplot, based
on real events, involves a giant auto company plotting to replace the interurban railway with freeways.
Significance
Live Action Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Animation Directed by
Richard Williams.
The 1988 film stars Bob Hoskins,
Christopher Lloyd, Joanna Cassidy and the voice of
Charles Fleischer. It
was adapted by Jeffrey Price
and Peter S. Seaman from
Gary Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?. The music was composed by perennial Zemeckis film composer Alan Silvestri and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
The movie won Academy Awards for Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing, Best Effects, Visual Effects, Best Film Editing and a Special Award for
Richard Williams for animation direction and creation of the
cartoon characters. It was nominated for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography and Best Sound.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is seen as a landmark film that sparked a renaissance in the animation
industry. The field of American animation had become lackluster and worn-out during the 1960s and 1970s, to the point where even giants in the field such as The Walt Disney Company were considering giving up on major
animated productions. This expensive film (production cost of $50 million - a staggering amount for the time) was a major risk
for the company...one that paid off handsomely. It inspired other studios to dive back into the field of animation; it also made
animation acceptable with the moviegoing public. After Roger Rabbit, interest in the history of animation exploded, and
such legends in the field as Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and even Ralph Bakshi were seen in a new
light, receiving much-deserved credit and acclaim from audiences worldwide.
Also interesting was despite Roger Rabbit being produced by Disney's Touchstone Pictures division (in association with Steven Spielberg's Amblin
Entertainment), it also marked the first (and to date, the only) time that charaters from several animation studios (from
Universal to Republic, and from Turner
Entertainment to Warner Bros.) appeared in one film, most notably
Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck
making their animation/live-action hybrid debut many years before Space
Jam, and obviously, the first-ever meeting between Bugs and Mickey
Mouse.
The movie opens with a Roger Rabbit short subject. Eventually, several additional independent animated shorts
featuring Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, and Baby Herman would be released. These shorts were presented in front of various
Touchstone/Disney features in an attempt to revive short subject animation as a part of the moviegoing experience. These shorts
include Tummy Trouble
released in front of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (this was included on the original video release of the film),
Roller Coaster
Rabbit shown in front of Dick Tracy and Trail Mix-Up shown in front of
A Far Off Place.
They were all released on video in 1996 on a tape called The Best of Roger
Rabbit, and in 2003 on a special edition DVD of Who Framed Roger
Rabbit..
Trivia
The story goes that there were several Easter eggs
hidden by the animators. Tape-based analog video such as VHS did not reveal these, but better image quality delivering
technologies such as the laserdisc were said to reveal amongst others the phone
number of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and parts of Jessica's
anatomy that are deemed unsuitable viewing for children in some cultures. Disney recalled the Laserdisc and issued another disc,
later claiming that it was an incorrectly painted cel. Oddly, they also stated that the cel in question could be seen on the new
disc and on the VHS version, raising the question "if it's on the VHS version too, why was only the laserdisc recalled, and if
the new discs were reissued with the same flawed cel, why did they go through the trouble in the first place?"
Much of the cinematography and several scenes of the film are an homage to Roman Polanski's Chinatown.
Previous Films Combining Live action with Animation
Audiences were amazed by the ground-breaking special effects used in Who Framed Roger Rabbit to create a "realistic"
portrayal of the interaction of animated characters and live actors. While the film did this with more advanced technology than
previous films, the combination of animation and live action had been practised since the beginnings of animated cartoons, often
to very good effect. The Walt Disney version of Mary Poppins with
Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke dancing with animated penguins was a huge success in 1964. Prior to that, the 1940 Warner Bros. cartoon You Ought To Be
In Pictures (directed by Friz Freleng) can be seen as a predecessor to
Roger Rabbit, while the animated sequence in the film Anchors
Aweigh in which Gene Kelly dances with an animated Jerry Mouse is one of the actor's most
famous scenes. In the days of silent film, Walt Disney's first directorial efforts (years before Mickey
Mouse was born) were the animated Alice short cartoons, in which a young girl named Alice interacted with animated
cartoon characters, which in turn was a variation on the earlier popular cartoons of Max Fleischer where his cartoon character Koko the
Clown interacted with the live world, such as having a boxing match with a live kitten. The tradition goes all the way back
to the earliest days of animation with Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur, which climaxes with a scene in which the
live-action narrator enters the animated landscape and takes a ride on the famous dinosaur's back.
Quotations
- Jessica Rabbit: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."
Errors
- Despite the film taking place in 1947, the model sheets used for many of the characters in it, especially the Warner Bros. stars, who were on paid
license from Time Warner, were typically older ones that were not actually in
use at the time (Bugs Bunny, noticeably, used an early sheet that was phased out of use at Warner Bros./Leon Schlesinger Pictures in
1943).
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