Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Photographed by Dean Cundey
1988
Starring: Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd
““I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way””
If there is a movie that hits home to my childhood, it has to be Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Before there was South Park or the Simpsons, the original potty-mouthed cartoons came straight from the Bob Zemeckis picture. Packed with quirky comments I couldn’t pick up as a kid, this picture is fresh even the 100th time I watch it. There is a perfect balance of Adult Humor and cartoons. What makes this Film extremely unique is how Zemeckis is able to explore a dark, film noir subject, with such colors and characters. It is so well directed that you as a watcher forget that you’re following a toon’s story. The film’s innovation doesn’t only come from combining cartoons and humans but also combining their situations. The story gives cartoons human problems and humans cartoon problems (for example being murdered by a falling safe/piano.) One of the sequences that struck me the most the last time I saw the picture, was when we find out why Eddie Valiant is the way he is. The camera stars with a Hitchcockian silhouette appearing in Valiant’s office/ apartment door reading Valiant & Valiant. Notice how I mentioned Hitchcock (I’ll come back to that.) From the door the camera follows Valiant as he looks at some vacation pictures of him with his lover and his now deceased brother. He then proceeds to sit down and drink scotch as the camera leaves him behind, revealing picture and newspaper clippings all over the apartment showing what a truly wonderful team his brother and Eddie were. Through this we find out that the fruit of Valiant’s bitterness is the assassination of his brother (which we later discover he was indeed murdered by a toon.) When the camera is done with the cycle, showing us enough pictures and clippings to give us the information we need, it goes back to Valiant, now asleep inebriated. By doing this Zemeckis tells us everything we need to know to understand Eddie’s dispirited behavior, without using one single word of dialogue. Does this seem familiar? Maybe because, in my opinion, this sequence was somewhat inspired by the opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I almost forgot! I believe this is one of Bob Hoskins best performances; it’s definitely my favorite. Eddie Valiant, a washed-up alcoholic who has nothing to look forward to but unpaid bills and an almost empty bottle of whisky, no body could’ve pulled this role better than Hoskins. On one last note I’m going to leave you with a question I asked myself endlessly as a kid, how in the hell did they get Daffy and Donald Duck together to have a piano-off?
