The 20th Anniversary of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

A lot of actors who have to act with cartoon characters in movies today probably celebrate that they don't have to worry quite as much about their timing as the actors in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" had to. If you've seen the clips of actor Bob Hoskins filming the interaction scenes with Roger and Jessica Rabbit (plus every famous cartoon character of the past)--it's a downright miracle what was accomplished while "Roger Rabbit" filmed in 1987 for a June 1988 release. Pretending to interact with those animated characters in complex situations (plus setting wires to give the illusion of the characters picking up even more complex objects) seems such a distant way to do a film like this without the use of CGI. But a lot more people than we think will likely admit they miss seeing a movie made this way--and with a lot more convincing interaction between human and animated characters.

With the reports that a long-overdue sequel to "Roger Rabbit" may be made soon, some fans of the original are hoping they'll make it the same way as they did twenty years ago.

Let's go back 20 years, though, and see what the initial reaction was to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" during a year that wasn't really all that bad for the movies: 1988. Leading up to June of that year, theatres already had huge hits with "Three Men and a Baby", "Good Morning Vietnam", "Beetlejuice" and "Crocodile Dundee II." When "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" opened on June 24--nobody really knew what to expect. There really hadn't been a movie combining live-action and animation in a long time--even though people were already getting spoiled to increasing eye-popping special effects that were on the cusp of a CGI breakthrough. I was a teen at the time and was initially attracted to the idea of classic cartoon characters from competing studios interacting for the first time in a movie.

Many would welcome Roger Rabbit (voiced by Charles Fleischer) back with open arms--and subsequently start more impersonations of his "p-p-p-p-please" all over again...

Credit: wikimedia.org (via fair use)

Copyright: wikimedia.org (via fair use)