The star of 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit was like nothing we’d ever seen before. Not in terms of character; as voiced by comic Charles Fleischer, he was a floppy-eared, baggy-pants vaudeville clown, a nervous, needy, clingy relic from an era of seltzer spray-bottles that was already passé even in 1947, when the movie takes place. But he also seemed real, shaded to look three-dimensional (by animation whiz Richard Williams) and interacting seamlessly with live actors like Bob Hoskins (as private eye Eddie Valiant) and Christopher Lloyd (as Judge Doom).
He was as cutting-edge technically, as he was a throwback comically. Still, he was funny, which is how he was able to land Jessica Rabbit, the voomy wife (voiced by Kathleen Turner) who famously said, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.” Give the Rabbit couple credit, not just for their technical brilliance, or for their clever movie (a kiddie “Chinatown”), but also for brokering a détente (however temporary) between feuding toons. Who else could have gotten Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Warners’ Bugs Bunny to share the screen?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv6dWhBlsoM]