For a brief period of time, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was my favorite movie. I saw it when it was in theaters and it blew my mind! I mean, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny sharing a scene together? Donald Duck and Daffy Duck trying to kill each other!? Toons and people interacting flawlessly? It was freaking amazing! I left the theater that day thinking that anything was possible in movies.
Released on June 22, 1988, Roger Rabbit was director Robert Zemeckis’ interlude between Back to the Future and Back to the Future II. In many ways, though, it was bigger than either of those two movies. It was the first movie to seamlessly integrate animation and live-action (yes, it had been done before, in movies such as Mary Poppins, but never as well). It also brought together characters from Disney and Warner Bros., which was as unheard of then as a movie mash-up with Marvel and DC characters would be today. It was truly revolutionary.
Produced by Steven Spielberg, Roger Rabbit starred Bob Hoskins in a breakout role as Eddie Valiant, Christopher Lloyd, Back to the Future’s Doc Brown, as toon killer Judge Doom, Charles Fleischer as the voice of Roger, and Kathleen Turner as the voice of Roger’s sultry singer wife Jessica. (Fun fact: Spielberg and Zemeckis originally wanted Bill Murray for the lead role of Valiant, but couldn’t get in touch with him.) The role of Eddie was so demanding for Hoskins, having to imagine most of his co-stars, he suffered from hallucinations following the production.
It was also a bit controversial at the time for its somewhat adult themes and language in what was presumably a kid’s movie. Perhaps that stemmed from the fact that it was based on a pretty dark novel, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? In that book, Roger dies early on and early drafts of Framed also had Roger dying in the film. It is widely believed that had it come out several years later, it would have received a PG-13 rating from the MPAA instead of the PG rating it did get. It also shared multiple parallels with the 1974 Jack Nicholson classic Chinatown, which was also about a detective haunted by tragedy being hired to investigate a case of infidelity. Of course, Jake Gittes wasn’t also tasked with proving the innocence of a cartoon bunny charged with murder!
Who Framed Roger Rabbit was initially budgeted at $30 million, but the long production shoot more than doubled that amount to $70 million. The tedious process of animating characters and backgrounds into every frame of a scene that they appeared in meant the shoot lasted nearly three times as long as it normally would have. Although initial test screenings of the film did not go well, the film turned out to be a huge success, grossing nearly $330 million worldwide.
Spielberg returned to the mash-up format with this year’s Ready Player One, featuring well-known characters from multiple franchises (this time, a PG-13 rating was handed out). Zemeckis went on to pioneer other innovations in film, as with Forrest Gump and Polar Express. And although there have been a handful of films since Roger Rabbit that have combined animation and live-action (Space Jam and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of the Water, to name a couple), none have come close to recapturing the same wonder and quality that Roger Rabbit did. That, and the fact that it is just a really great movie, will be its lasting legacy.
So, for the 30th anniversary of this groundbreaking film, remember to smile, darn ya, smile!
