Most animation fans remember the Rocky and Bullwinkle TV show with varying degrees of clarity. Rocky the flying squirrel and Bullwinkle the dimwitted moose were the crown jewels of a looney crew created by writer Jay Ward. Unlike most limited-animation cartoons of the era, Ward’s creations were heirs to the Marx Brothers’ tradition of awful puns, wacky wordplay, irreverence, and surreal plotting. Ward strongly influenced subsequent comics and cartoons such as The Tick and The Simpsons, even if Ward himself made most of his money by creating the Cap’n Crunch characters. Ward was a silly man who made silly cartoons and many of us fondly remember the goodwill he generated through his work.

Unfortunately, not much of Ward’s humor makes it into Des McAnuff’s film. The plot is little more than a convoluted attempt to justify the awkward combination of live action and animation. As with the original Muppet Movie (which it strongly resembles), The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle’s cast consists mainly of cameos from B-list celebrities. The cameos range from the good-natured (John Goodman) to the indifferent (Jonathan Winters) to the embarrassed (Whoopi Goldberg), and help to distract from the clueless screenplay provided by Kenneth Lonergan. Piper Perabo, who would later play one of the Coyote Ugly bartenders, plays a pathologically cute FBI agent named Karen Sympathy. Rene Russo and Jason Alexander do neat Soviet accents as evil agents Natasha and Boris, but contribute little beyond that. Robert DeNero’s Fearless Leader is frighteningly pointless, especially when compared to Mike Myer’s Dr. Evil character from Austin Powers. The CGI effects are merely adequate.

Even if McAnuff created a more competent product, Rocky and Bullwinkle still runs into severe conceptual problems. However funny characters like Rocky and Bullwinkle (or Dudley Do-Right, or Fred Flintstone, etc.) were on Saturday morning television, they are far too two-dimensional to be more than supporting characters in their own movie. The disturbingly large genre of animated-oldie-turned-live-action-kitsch will continue to fester until even the smallest audiences finally reject Hollywood’s attempts to exploit knee jerk nostalgia.

Rocky and Bullwinkle bombed at the box-office and director McAnuff hasn’t done another feature film since. Regardless, Rocky and Bullwinkle is an innocuous way to spend an hour and a half on a dull afternoon, and it might inspire some of its small audience to seek out the far superior TV show of the same name.

Other NonAnime Reviews Star Wars Holiday Special Review The Emperor's New Groove Review Shrek Review Final Fantasy Review Titan A.E. Review*

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