Amazon.com Essentials:
This zany, eye-popping, knee-slapping landmark in combining
animation with live-action ingeniously makes that uneasy
combination itself (and the history of Hollywood) its subject.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is based on classic L.A.
private-eye movies (and, specifically, Chinatown), with
detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) investigating a case involving adultery, blackmail, murder, and a fiendish plot to replace Los Angeles's
once-famous Red Car public transportation system with the
automobiles and freeways that would later make it the nation's
smog capital. Of course, his sleuthing takes him back to the place
he dreads: Toontown, the ghetto for cartoons that abuts Hollywood and
that was the site of a tragic incident in Eddie's past. In addition
to intermingling cartoon characters with live actors and locations, Roger Rabbit also brings together the greatest array of cartoon stars in the history of motion pictures, from a variety of studios (Disney, Warner Bros., MGM, Fleischer, Universal, and elsewhere): Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Droopy Dog, and more! And, of course, there's Maroon Cartoon's greatest
star, Roger Rabbit (voice by Charles Fleischer), who suspects his
ultracurvaceous wife, Jessica Rabbit (voice by Kathleen Turner: "I'm not
bad; I'm just drawn that way"), of infidelity. Directed by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Contact), not
since the early Looney Tunes' "You Oughtta Be in Pictures" has
there been anything like Roger Rabbit. --Jim Emerson
