The
Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle tries to break its boundaries,
but never succeeds in transcending its genre. The classic
television show that spawned it, of course, became a classic
by winking at its adult viewers.
In the process, it became something more than quick, televised,
animated shorts ostensibly aimed at children. The television
show could succeed rather easily in violating its fourth wall
because the walls were so very constricting in the first place.
Now swap the tube for the towering images of the movies, and
multiply the TV budget by about a googol or so. In casting
off its limitations, "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle"
makes it much tougher for the writers, actors, animators and
directors to transcend their genre. And they don’t.
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Keith Scott does do an admirable job of voicing Bullwinkle
J. Moose and the Narrator. You don’t get any of those awkward
post-Mel Blanc moments where something about Bug Bunny’s voice
makes you lift an eyebrow suspiciously.
Unfortunately, the closest thing to those moments occurs with
the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel, June Foray, the original
Rocky. Perhaps the sound editors are to blame, but frankly
the 80-year-old sounds a little tired.
The flesh-and-blood cast is a stellar one – though not necessarily
replete with stellar performances. If you love movies, you’ll
hate having seen Robert DeNiro as Fearless Leader in this
one. Rene Russo and Jason Alexander are nice analogues for
Natasha Fatale and Boris Badenov, but seldom anything more.
Piper Perabo has what feels like the lead, a role that should
have been written out of the movie entirely.
The cameos are, again, nice but nothing more. Their most powerful
impact is to remind us that future generations will curse
us for failing to have a camera rolling on Jonathan Winters
24 hours a day.
As stale as the puns (and their accompanying to-camera quips)
are, the plot, no surprise, does nothing to rescue this movie.
What is perhaps most sad is that a few moments peak through
that hint at what a stronger movie would have been like. A
wasted subplot about Rocky’s trouble flying could have had
tremendous impact, but it – and its resolution – are thrown
away with little thought.
Perhaps the movie is a victim of the show’s cult success.
Rocky and Bullwinkle, along with pop-culture step-siblings
such as Mad magazine, were seminal subversive influences for
a generation of Hollywood creators. Everything that Rocky
and Bullwinkle did on television has already been done by
now on television and in the movies.
"The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" had to break new
ground, but found itself trapped on the path of its moose-shaped
footprints.
Jonathan
Larsen
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