THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE (2000)

I remember a childhood VHS tape, with Robert De Niro asking the trailer’s narrator if he was talking to him, so distinctly that I jumped at the chance for this retrospective. I’d never seen the film it was advertising. Outside of the 2008 XBOX Live Arcade video game that my friend bought, I didn’t even know who Rocky and Bullwinkle were. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is another film that updates old IP for a new generation and yet insists on reminding children what they missed out on when their parents were their age.

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (1959-1964) was an animated variety show supported by cartoon characters like Dudley Do-Right and Peabody and Sherman. A live-action feature-length Dudley Do-Right (1999) had just become a critical and commercial flop. But this didn’t deter De Niro, already years into producing a Rocky and Bullwinkle film. The series was created by Jay Ward and Alex Anderson, joined by Chris Hayward and Allan Burns, who later created The Munsters (1964-66) before Burns co-created The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77). R&B would shuffle from primetime to afternoons and Saturday mornings, but the comedy would endure far longer in the memories of later cartoonists creating Rocko’s Modern Life (1993-96) and The Simpsons. TV Guide rated the ’60 Greatest Animated TV Shows of All Time,’ and Rocky and Bullwinkle came sixth, and they just about made it into their ’50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.’ That’s all to say, this cartoon was funny.

While the show had stopped, the characters persevered much in the way of The Muppets—through selling out. In the 1990s, Rocky and Bullwinkle were shilling Taco Bell, Energizer, and Target, but their animated villains received the first taste of Hollywood. Before Do-Right, there was Boris and Natasha: The Movie (1992) starring the conniving Cold War spies, this time not being foiled by the conspicuously absent moose and squirrel. This was likely due to De Niro and his producing partner Jane Rosenthal pitching their big-screen adaptation as far back as 1991.

“I watched the show as a kid, and from a child’s perspective, I just enjoyed the little squirrel and the big dumb moose. But when I saw the videos again, I realised how incredibly smart and sophisticated the satire was in each episode, which you missed completely as a kid. It’s charming, topical, savvy and funny, and after doing movies with gangsters, serial killers and such, we finally found something that we could do for our kids.”—Jane Rosenthal, producer.

In the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Space Jam (1996), and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), this is another meta-comedy aware of its absurdity. Rocky (voiced by June Foray) and Bullwinkle (voiced by Keith Scott) have been living on ever-diminishing residuals since their cancellation, and even the narrator (also Scott) has had to move back in with his mother.

When Phony Pictures’ exec Minnie Mogul (Janeane Garofalo) is busy shredding script after script with the same criticism of “too intelligent”, she hurriedly signs a contract with Boris (Jason Alexander), Natasha (Rene Russo), and their fearless leader, Fearless Leader (De Niro). This pulls them out of the cartoon into the real world because they’re “attached to the project”. Their aspirations to take over the world are reported to the President, and FBI Agent Sympathy (Piper Perabo) enlists the two animated heroes to stop them. All of this condensed breathlessly in the first 10 minutes with a similarly brief climax, 80% of the runtime is a protracted middle act of gags, goofs, and hijinks.

To handle such a labyrinthine concept, they tapped screenwriter, director, and playwright Kenneth Lonergan. Rocky and Bullwinkle would be the filling in his Academy Award sandwich; first, You Can Count on Me (2000) was Oscar-nominated for ‘Best Screenplay’, then R&B came out, followed by his second nomination for Gangs of New York (2002). He’s since won that award for Manchester by the Sea (2016), along with a BAFTA Award and nominations for three Golden Globe Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and three Tony Awards. All signs point to this being pretty good.

To quote Peter Griffin, Rocky and Bullwinkle insists upon itself. Like a moose and squirrel eating their own tails, the recursive comedy becomes too self-aware. A few jabs at their own expense, like Sympathy asking if Bullwinkle can rappel during an escape and his boast “sure, I’ve been repelling viewers for years!” are outweighed by the overwhelming self-congratulatory reverence. The screenplay can’t stop fawning over the very idea that they have the rights to these characters despite acknowledging the show had been cancelled 30-odd years prior. College campuses, the FBI, and even Whoopi Goldberg cheer their name. A 23-year-old Sympathy looks up to them as her idols, while kids in the audience likely have no idea who they are. This is their first exposure, and it’s a non-stop parade of two timeless icons in what is otherwise an extremely average film.

They come from a different era and a throwback to cleaner comedy can be welcome but the original series was lauded for its adult satire and this lacks all bite compared to cutting-edge animations like The Simpsons, South Park, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast (1994-2001) itself an incredible renovation of a 1960s cartoon. Fearless Leader starts RBTV (Really Bad Television) to zombify the country, which seems the perfect chance to eschew contemporary entertainment. Instead, we get Three Wacky Spies and Their Horse Who Is Also a Spy. Cute, but toothless. One of the funniest lines in the entire film is referencing a better-executed film.

Fearless Leader: “Until now there has never been a way to actually destroy a cartoon character.”

Scientist: “What about that movie Roger Rabbit?”

Fearless Leader: “SHUT UP THIS IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT!”

There are many times I chuckled politely, but between Lonergan and director Des McAnuff, a similarly overqualified Member of the Order of Canada with two Tony Awards, there are hardly any real laughs. Boris and Natasha have a range of success in their ineptitude at “smooshing” moose and squirrel. An old-school cannon is pointedly uninspired, constructing an entire water tower for a vantage point is charming, and one of the few genuine guffaws was them stealing the Indiana Jones style onscreen map to find out where to go. This is also a Hollywood feature film, and none of the spectacle is exciting, clever, or all that funny, highlighting the exact advantages animation has over live-action. And don’t mention Roger Rabbit when they did it better.

They are led by the fearless Robert De Niro, who finds that donning a funny haircut and a funny accent is enough to make a funny character. The Taxi Driver (1976) parody propagated around the internet during the heyday of the ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movie culture, though it now incidentally drags modern viewings down with preconceptions for an otherwise inoffensive middle-of-the-road experience. Sharing the scene with several friends, including fellow Frame Rated writer Alexander Boucher, elicited the most emotive reactions this film could muster: “this is sad to see”, “oh God, this is painful,” and “it physically hurts me when he does this kind of comedy.”

What makes this film so unmistakably a product of its time is the stacked supporting cast: Randy Quaid, James Rebhorn, Paget Brewster, John Goodman, David Alan Grier, Don Novello, Jon Polito, Carl Reiner, Norman Lloyd, Jonathan Winters, and Billy Crystal. Whoopi Goldberg’s character is literally named Judge Cameo. For concentrated nostalgia, the best millennial time capsule is Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell giving extended explanations on the function and purpose of fax and email connected to this new “internet”. They commiserate Rocky and Bullwinkle on their show cancellation while winking at each other that’ll never happen to them, hopefully with the knowledge they knew Kenan & Kel (1996-2000) would be over by the time this was in cinemas.

The overstuffed cast getting their one or two funny lines in distracts from the two leads, which this film supposedly adores. Not helping is the cartoon logic applied to the real world. Sympathy breaks into the studio to activate the literal green-light-house and flips the “fantasy adventure” and “road movie” switches to bring Rocky and Bullwinkle into reality, which is also knowingly a film. Russo did admit she was “fortunate because I got to do most of my work with Jason and Robert” while Perabo, in her first starring role, shared almost every scene with two leads not there in the moment. Her enthusiastic character contrasts with the deadpan Bob Hoskins opposite Roger Rabbit, but is closer to Jim Carrey acting as animated as Sonic the Hedgehog. Rocky and Bullwinkle is most reminiscent in tone to Looney Tunes: Back in Action with Brendan Fraser and Steve Martin acclimating their performances to Bugs Bunny. Perhaps what this film needed was Michael Jordan as Michael Jordan. Space Jam accentuated how looney these toons were, whereas Rocky and Bullwinkle all too often blend into the comic noise, which exposes how little they have to offer in the film of their namesake.

The original series’ art was so unpolished that it’s been described as a “well-written radio programme with pictures.” The biggest upgrade for the big screen was provided by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), which produced around 600 effects shots, 400 of which featured the animated characters. Rocky and Bullwinkle was their second largest project after Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999). McAnuff wanted to “maintain the simplicity of the original characters”, and yet ILM went above and beyond in mastering all new techniques in 3D animation with cel-shading rendering to mimic a 2D cartoon. In one travelling montage alone, the effects team were showing off as the setting sun cast them in silhouette, razor-thin tall grass partially obscured them, and realistic icicles hung off Bullwinkle’s antlers while Rocky’s goggles frosted over.

The attention of younger audiences is often more directed by colourful characters rather than any intentional direction from McAnuff. These images crafted by ILM have far more care and attention behind them than the rest of the flat and washed-out live-action scenes. McAnuff has directed only two feature films, Cousin Bette (1998) being his first and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle being his last. Despite their vast differences, both failed critically and commercially. He did, at the very least, produce The Iron Giant (1999), which underperformed at the box office but remains critically one of the greatest animated features of our time.

Journalist Patrick Goldstein addressed the movement of “cross-business asset management” in his 2000 review. Explaining the corporate synergist jargon that, “You make movies out of easily digestible fare to feed ancillary businesses; a hit film could generate a new TV show, video game or theme-park attraction.” He backs that up with the slew of successes that dominated the industry in the early-‘90s: The Addams Family (1991) did well, The Fugitive (1993) did even better and was Academy Award nominated for ‘Best Editing’ by Dennis Virkler, who also edited this film. The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), The Flintstones (1994), Casper (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996)… they all made money. “But none of Universal’s late ‘90s recycled TV films were hits”, reconciles Goldstein. “McHale’s Navy (1997) brought in a lowly $4.4M. Leave It to Beaver (1997) took in only $11M. Dudley Do-Right, despite the presence of The Mummy (1999) star Brendan Fraser, tanked with $9.7M.”

With a budget of $76M, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle grossed $35M with only 42% of critics praising the film, aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes. A paltry sum, given how self-aggrandising the film makes out the two stars to be popular. Scooby-Doo (2002) banked on another ‘60s cartoon and raked in $275M. Coincidentally, that’s the same box office takings of fellow Rocky and Bullwinkle alumni Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014), but which also earned great reviews and a Netflix animated TV series.

Roger Ebert did give this film a glowing three-out-four-star review, but ends commenting that “comedy is such a fragile art form” and “there’s a word for this movie, and that word is: jolly.” There’s another word: safe. It should’ve broken the boundaries of the art form rather than patting itself on the back for praising a cartoon from 35 years prior. It all seems ironic in hindsight how much emphasis was placed on Rocky and Bullwinkle being cancelled 60-odd years ago. Their big Hollywood return follows the cyclical fate of being forgotten like so many of those ill-fated cross-business asset management attempts.

USA • GERMANY | 2000 | 92 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Des McAnuff.
writer: Kenneth Lonergan.
starring: Piper Perabo, Robert De Niro, Rene Russo, Jason Alexander, June Forey (voice) & Keith Scott (voice).