| THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE |
2000 - USA
Director: Des McAnuff - Reviewed by Robert 
The biggest mistake the producers made in making a movie out of Rocky & Bullwinkle was to try to make anything other than a campy cult film for the cult followers of the TV show. The biggest accomplishment is that, even laden with an explicitly Hollywood-esque self-discovery plot, the humor and chaotic joy of the original show still shines through. It doesn't take a degree from Wottsamatta U to spot the plot holes and slow spots in this crossover from TV-land. The film itself points them out to you. Frequently. And if you liked the original Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, you'll laugh for a while, as I did. If you didn't like the original show, or even if you're unfamiliar with it, you will be bored stiff before five minutes have passed. And if you aren't up on all the shifts and moves in American culture since 1964, then you'll miss half the jokes. The moose and squirrel, accompanied by cuter-than-cute FBI agent Karen Sympathy (Perabo) blunder from Hollywood through Middle America (where, thanks to strip malls and McCulture every town looks like every other) and finally to cable TV and the Internet, punning and philosophizing all along the way. Keep your ears and eyes open; half the movie is packed with cultural and (occasionally) political references. The other half of the movie tries to pace the frenetic bumblings of our heroes and follow the Hollywood conventions of "giving the audience a breather" and "pacing." The TV show planted itself as a cross between vaudevillesque variety show and Saturday cinema cliffhangers; the movie certainly didn't need to stretch itself to fit into some Disneyfied idea of what a film should be. (I found the nostalgic insertion of songs into the soundtrack particularly distracting.) I didn't want so much character development, and I wanted more dimwitted violence from Boris and Natasha. I didn't want pacing or breathers, I wanted to be hit with episodic persistence, more and worse puns, more outrageous obstacles with less possible solutions. And I wanted the script to let loose some sharper social and political criticism. The original show never named names, but you knew exactly who they were talking about. In the movie, I felt like they fell prey to the greatest cultural shift since the 1960's: not the end of the cold war, not the triumph of consumerism, but rather the utter fear of offending anyone. I wanted to be offended by their politics, to be cut deeply by their critiques of our so-called culture, and occasionally it happened, as in the running "Isn't this the same town" gag. (I kept waiting for Bullwinkle to say, as he surfed the Internet, "Haven't we seen this town before?" but he didn't.) Because when our own faults are plastered up on the screen for all to see, and we see both the truth and the absurdity of it, well, that's comedy. It was in there, but it was watered down. I hate to think that the writers couldn't come up with 88 minutes of material. On the other hand, I did laugh. A lot. And I didn't care if the kids weren't because they didn't get it, or the adults didn't because they were too worried about their kids. It was good clean fun, and so what if it wasn't a moose-terpiece. |
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