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| The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle |
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| Movies,
Jerry Carpenter,
19 February 2001 |
Rating: F2
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One hour into this smelly kettle of fish and you’re asking yourself, ‘Why is multi-Oscar winning actor Robert de Niro not just starring in, but also bank rolling such an impossible-to-make-good film like this ?’. Either Bob’s has a touch of the sun, or like me he’s just a really, really enthusiastic fan of the genius cartoons of Jay Ward – creator of such epoch making TV as ‘Roger Ramjet’, ‘Dudly doo-right’ and of course ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’. Ward’s fast firing style of flippantly narrated five minute wonders still kick the arse of Disney and Warner Bros for me, and the absence on the high street of a Ward shop selling Ramjet boxers and Bullwinkle egg-timers makes me shake with rage.
So what a pisser then to be shifting uncomfortably in my seat for 90 minutes watching the big screen big budget re-incarnation of the dumb moose and his spunky flying tree-rat friend. The opening titles and beyond are fine, it’s just a witty catch-up on the pair’s existence since their show’s cancellation. Then the villains turn up and one of them has been specifically restyled in cartoon form to look like Robert de Niro, and it’s a bad feeling that begins to creep upon me. Then the villains get sucked into the real world and start up a ‘fiendish plan’. Then the FBI despatch kooky agent Piper Perabo to go grab Rocky and Bullwinkle to sort stuff out. Then I realise that this film is trying really, really, really hard to be funny, and after half and hour of such good intentions it’s wearisome.
It’s the first law of TV franchise movies – don’t try to recreate the original experience on screen. ‘Charlie’s Angels didn’t go off down the cheesy boring route to ape a show that was never really that good in the first place, it went instead for a full power post MTV generation witty arse-kick of a film. ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ wants to be funny like the original show was, but it’s a ninety minute long experience, as opposed to say five minutes. It don’t add up, and it don’t hold the attention, and no matter what amount of talent you chuck up on screen it don’t stick. So class performers like Jason Alexander and Renee Russo, and cameos by John Goodman and Whoopi Goldberg are all piss in the wind. And putting in a horribly laboured reference to Bob’s finest hour in ‘Taxi Driver’ just makes you pull splinters out of the cinema seat.
Hey, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t HATE it – for all the obvious whinges there are occasional pleasures. Rocky seems to have his original voice thank goodness, plus there’s some great music in there ( ‘Dreamer’ by Supertramp ! ) and you can have lots of fun spotting the non-CGI Bullwinkle in long shots where they’ve just got some bloke wearing a moose-head. But by making a film in which the villain’s evil plan is to hypnotise the populace into submission by broadcasting mind-numbingly boring TV shows so boring itself the film’s makers ( and I’m talking to you, Bob ) are asking for a seriously large cartoon piano on the head.
UK rating:
PG
US rating:
PG
Des McNuff
Piper Perabo, Robert de Niro, Jason Alexander, Renee Russo
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