The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle

The 1990s were a strange time for feature films... thanks to the success of The Addams Family, we had a seemingly endless wave of retro TV-inspired films seeking to marry hokey, nostalgic television properties with postmodern jokes and other annoyingly self-referential winks at contemporary audiences. These best of these projects ranged from the serious and inspired (The Fugitive) to the mockingly clever (The Brady Bunch). The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle tries hard to fall into that second category but falls very short of 'clever', and is perhaps the most bizarre of all the TV show adaptations I've seen.

The film takes a look at Rocky and Bullwinkle's absence from modern television in a metafictional way. The two characters have been living in retirement since their show was cancelled but their arch-enemies Boris (Jason Alexander), Natasha (Rene Russo) and Fearless Leader (Robert De Niro) find a way to leave their cartoon world and become live-action versions of themselves. It's up to Rocky, Bullwinkle, and an inexperienced FBI agent named Karen Sympathy (her name is a joke that only works in an American accent) to come to the world's rescue before the evil East-European villains can literally take over all of network television.

Leaving aside (for the moment) the question of why someone would even want to make a feature film based on this old cartoon, the film is a complete waste of space. The writers try their best to be hip by filling the film with witty self-aware stereotypes but at the end of the day it's just not a film that anyone really wants to see. Even with the predominantly live-action cast, it comes off as deliberately cartoonish (with characters named General Admission, Minnie Mogul and Judge Cameo), which is something that I'm just not a fan of. It's full of unabashedly obvious one-liners and satirises Hollywood in the most banal and broadly-rendered fashion. Imagine a lighthouse that actually emits a green light in order to give films and TV shows the go-ahead... it's that kind of 'clever' humour you're up against. There's also no internal logic at all, the film's only aim seems to be to go for cheap laughs over and over again. Predictably, it all ends with a tie-in hip-hop/RnB song that features Rocky and Bullwinkle rapping.

The most embarrassing aspect is probably De Niro as Fearless Leader. As required by the film, he's cartoonish and over-the-top, and even sports a fascistic 1930s haircut and German accent. It's the only live-action 'kids' film that he's ever done and hopefully he'll never do one again... it's so bad it even features him doing a parody of his famous "You talkin' to me?" bit from Taxi Driver.

Anyway, avoid this film at all costs. I only watched it because I'm a De Niro completist, but I just have to say that everything else aside, the issue remaining is - why would anyone want to make this movie, let alone watch it? Are there actually any hardcore Rocky and Bullwinkle fans out there?

DIRECTOR: Des McAnuff
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Kenneth Lonergan, based on the 1960s animated serial, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
KEY ACTORS: Robert De Niro, Rene Russo, Jason Alexander, Piper Perabo, Randy Quaid, June Foray, Keith Scott, Janeane Garofalo, Carl Reiner, John Goodman, James Rebhorn, Jon Polito, Taraji P. Henson, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg

RELATED TEXTS:
- The 1950s cartoon Rocky and Friends, and its 1960s spinoff, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
- There was a bizarre early 90s spinoff film called Boris and Natasha: The Movie. It featured neither Rocky or Bullwinkle.
- This film was 'inspired' by the production of the film Dudley Do-Right, also based on characetrs from the same TV show. A third film, Peabody's Improbable History, was also planned but never eventuated due to the poor box office performance of the other films.
- There are so many films based on TV shows that it would be impossible for me to list them all. Here are some of the ones based on cartoons (I'm sure they're all awful): Dennis the Menace, Inspector Gadget, Garfield, Smurfs. None of them were any good or made a whole heap of money, so why did so many of them get made?
- The best mixed live-action/animation film is easily Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- For a better film based on a TV show that features a metafictional approach, see The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse.