Who Framed Rogers Rabbit (1988) and Tummy Trouble (1989) Review

 Hey everyone! How's your weekend going? Mine's going pretty well. I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit last night and I gotta talk about it, because it is genius! So let's talk about it. It's more than 30 years old at this point so there will be "spoilers" in this review. Let's get started.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of those movies that I watched alot when I was a kid but hadn't seen since the VCR on my TV/VCR combo set conked out on me ten years ago and we got rid of our original VHS collection. We never had it on DVD or Blu-ray. Until this past December when I got it for my birthday. I forgot how funny it is. Mostly because it had the style of gag favoured by Tex Avery, and the Looney Tunes people. Like when Valiant is trying to get the cuffs off of him and Roger, and while he's trying to saw at it, Roger just slips his hand out of his end of the cuffs. I laughed at that because it's such a cartoon thing to do but I love that he could only do it when it was funny to do so.

That's one of the things that I love about this movie. When you watch those old cartoons, it doesn't seem like the Toons have any rules to follow. But they do. They can't just pull a gag like it seems like they can. They have to do it when it's funny and that's it. Then there's the unspoken/unwritten rule that I picked up when Eddie was telling Roger about how his brother died and that a Toon killed him. Toons aren't supposed to pull a gag with the intent to physically harm anyone. Which is fascinating.

It's actually interesting to see ALL of these cartoon characters in one movie. I mean you have Disney characters interacting with Looney Tunes characters, Fleischer characters, Universal characters, and MGM characters. Which couldn't be done today because of licensing issues and things like that. Though I would still love to see a Roger Rabbit animated series similar to the recent Mickey Mouse series. 

I actually like Eddie Valiant. Bob Hoskins is an amazing actor and I love how natural his interaction with Roger is given that the voice of Roger, Charles Fleischer, was off to the side of the set, with a Roger mock up on the set since the animation would be added in post. The character himself is pretty interesting with his "fall from grace" with the Toons due to his brother's murder at the hand of the Toon that we find out is Judge Doom, played wonderfully by Christopher Lloyd, who was everywhere in the '80s and '90s.

Jessica Rabbit never really did anything for me because Femme Fatales never have, and that's pretty much Jessica's role for most of the movie, until she explains everything to Eddie when they're in Toontown. Plus I was pretty young when I first saw the movie, and even when I watched it as a hormonal teenager, she didn't do anything for me. Fictional versus reality I guess. Lol.]

Judge Doom is weird. He's a Toon, from Toontown, but he wants to destroy Toontown in order to build a freeway? Why destroy his home when he could've ruled it as iron-fisted as he rules the Toons working in the live action world? That makes no real sense to me. But it works so we don't have to delve into his backstory too much. It's still an odd and interesting play for a late '80s villain character.

On the Blu-ray all three Roger Rabbit cartoons, that were produced alongside other movies, like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, are included in the bonus features, so I watched the first one, Tummy Trouble after I watched the movie. This is actually the only one I've seen because it was included on the original VHS release of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids which we had at my grandparents's house. And, despite it being set in a hospital, I loved it. Jessica Rabbit as a nurse, Roger being mistaken for Baby Herman and taken to be prepped for surgery to get a rattle out of him, which he had swallowed after Baby Herman had spit it up, and Baby Herman causing chaos for Roger. It made me laugh. And seeing it again for the first time in about fifteen years brought back so many nostalgic memories of watching Honey, I Shrunk the Kids on VHS at my grandparents's place.

Overall it was amazing getting to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit again after all these years. It was on my list to watch and review this year and I had planned on watching it on Disney+ since I didn't own a physical copy anymore. But I got the DVD/Blu-ray combo set, which is in the standard DVD case, instead of the Blu-ray/DVD combo set, which is in the standard Blu-ray case (Disney was weird in the 2010s), for my birthday and that's how I ended up watching it last night. It's a great movie and if, by any chance you live under a rock and haven't seen it before, I highly recommend you do so, because it's amazing!

Alrighty that's gonna be it for me for today, but I will be back soon with more great content here in the Geek Cave. So until then have a wonderful night and I will talk to you all later. Take care my friends and please stay safe!