Raging Bullwinkle

by
Lev David

Here in South Africa we never got to see much of the Cold War era TV cartoon "Rocky and Bullwinkle," where a simple-minded moose and a flying squirrel took on communist spies on a weekly basis. If the big screen revival The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is anything to go by, we should be very, very relieved.

The big problem isn't that this movie, which places animated characters in a live-action world, is unfunny (although it is), but rather that it barely even tries.

So, what's Robert De Niro doing in this raging bull? To be quite honest, not much. In fact, his role adds up to little more than a longish cameo, although his character, Fearless Leader (the bad guy) does get all the best lines. All two of them.

I don't really blame De Niro, or co-stars Jason Alexander and Rene Russo, for taking the job, since it probably looked better on paper than it does on the big screen. It may sound like a good idea to make live-action characters do cartoony things, like running off the tops of water towers and standing suspended in mid-air before realising that they're about to fall. But it isn't.

Then there are bits like Robert De Niro and Co. singing the Potsylvanian national anthem, which works as badly on paper as it does on celluloid. Unforgivable.

The film's favourite comedic device is to have the narrator or one of the characters (often speaking to the camera) admit how stupid a gag, or pun, or the movie in its entirety is. This works maybe once or twice, after which it becomes painfully obvious that a movie that acknowledges that it is bad is still a bad movie.

And if you're wondering if I've forgotten that this is a kiddie flick, and should be judged as such, perhaps I should mention that the kid on my left spent a good length of time entertaining himself under his chair. Even two animated cellphone conversations by the tweenie at the end of the aisle seemed to be greeted by the audience as a welcome distraction.

Sure, Rocky is cute, but so is Pikachu the Pokémon, and we've hit very dire times indeed when Pokémon represents a step up from anything.

CineScene, 2001