Rainbow Randolph is the top draw of daytime children's television; that is, until he is caught by the FBI taking cash in exchange for getting children onto the show. With the sleaze hurting the studio, the execs look for the cleanest replacement they can find - enter one Sheldon Mopes aka Smoochy the Rhino. Sheldon's clean cut approach rubs some of the execs up the wrong way as they try to push the usual marketing stuff through. While he makes enemies within the studio, Rainbow Randolph is fuming and planning to destroy Smoochy and get his show back.
I really wanted to love this simply because I am one of the few people in the UK who will have bothered to see this film since the collapse of FilmFour and poor US box office pretty much meant it barely reached video stores here. However the overall film doesn't really manage to do what it sets out to do. The plot seemed interesting to me a few years ago when it was first released in the US, but since then it's topical edge has been lost and what is left is a basic dark comedy. Within this there are a handful of good moments but generally it just doesn't work out; the jokes are dark to be sure, but it has far too few laughs - and not for the want of trying. The film throws in violent gags, slapstick gags, outrageous gags and so on, but too many of them slip by without eliciting laughter.
The plot is looked at to provide humour simply on the basis of how `unusual' and `darkly comic' it is, but it doesn't manage to provide laughs - but it does do enough to hold the interest. It has far too much going on and far too many characters to adequately control. As such it loses focus and, when it ended, I was unsure what it had been trying to accomplish but knowing for sure that it had failed. Too much is unstructured and the script would have done better to lose a lot of characters (who only exist to drive the plot occasionally) and focus on the main strands.
The cast is impressive but largely poor I'm afraid to say. Norton is a powerhouse and is one of my favourite actors as a result, but here he can't carry the whole film. His performance is good but only on the one level - when it goes beyond the comedy hippy, he loses it. Likewise Williams just tries to swear and shock to be funny - his best moments are the more serious moments where he is falling apart but the film doesn't allow him time to do it. Keener has good timing and a good role and she is worth watching here, as is Stewart, although he has little screen time. DeVito is OK as actor and his direction is good in terms of interesting shots and frames, however he can't bring it all together. Small roles from the Schiavelli and the dreaded Fierstein don't really add a great deal - and don't even get me started on the Irish mob caricatures!
Overall I have been interested in this film for about two years and had forgotten it by the time I chanced upon it in the video store. It had some good ideas and some potential but it was lost and the result is a film that is fragmented, unsure of it's self and, sadly, not very funny in either the dark sense or the laugh-out-loud sense. Missed by most of the UK and seen by me - and I think the majority are right on this one.
