i watched the 25th year remaster of
Who Framed Roger Rabbit -
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/alternateversions
when this film came out i caught it in the theaters and loved it - after 30 years, not so much.
I am still amazed that this film got made, as you know, the difficulty of mixing live acting with animation, the cost of having both animators and a film crew, and the really dangerous subject; after all, WFRR is a film about Jessica Rabbit, a cartoon that's hotter than a real woman. Because, realistically, *that* is what this film is about. It's as dirty as a X rated film, in the skin of a PG13.
Bob Hoskin was something of a hero to me in the 80s, and i was happy to see him in the lead.
The story is really good; a noir hero, a deadly dame, and .. a rabbit? The unusual twist gives you the excuse to shoehorn in the animations, which, for the 80s, were great - we didn't have any of the edgy cartoons that came later, so the animation of WFRR was actually quite "adult".
The direction .. uh. Nobody's good in this film. Bob is allright, but not great. I'll give it to him that he was mostly acting alongside a greenscreen, but the other actors didn't get the memo as to what type of film this was going to be. And honestly, i don't think the film know what it wants to be. There's a ton of comedy, but then there are parts of it that try to be dark, and, i don't mind that, i like that, i wish this was a proper film noir, but it isn't. Another film comes to mind that is similar, but plays it straight (IIRC), Cast A Deadly Spell (which i recommend), where the toons are replaced with magic instead.
The pacing is awful in places - the final showdown scene is hooooorrible, it's just so slow, that it absolutely kills any sense of urgency. Hoskins doesn't react well to what's supposed to be happening in the scene, and his dance routine is .. ugh .. cringey. I suppose that's the happy ending Zemeckis wanted.
The secondary characters absolutely suck. I mean, the acting. Dolores (Hoskin's love interest in the film) is flat and boring, the cops are played by people who thought they were acting in a children's movie, and poor ol' Bob Hoskins does what he can, but he also cannot maintain a tone throughout the film, and i blame Robert Zemeckis.
This is still a film i would strongly recommend to anyone who has not seen it; but then again, i also love Howard The Duck, so maybe my views are a bit outside of the ordinary.
32 years ago i would have rated this film anywhere between 8 and 8.5/10, but today i would give it
7.5/10 if you have already seen it, or 8/10 if you never have. At least one full point of that goes to the film having cultural significance ("i'm not bad, i'm just drawn that way"), as i am sure WFRR has massively influenced the development of adult cartoon entertainment, but, for the film itself, it's ok, but not great.