Movie: Death to Smoochy

Death to Smoochy:  2002 / Color / 109 minutes

Tagline: He's Big, He's Blue, He's Smoochy... and He's got to DIE!

Actually, the color of kid’s show rhino is fuscia, not blue, and the use of vibrant colors makes this bitter comedy a visual wonder.  I suppose I’m easy to impress since I watch mainly black and white movies, but I’ve rarely seen a movie with such richly saturated colors. The colors in the production design pop like colors in The Simpsons.

The other strong point is the casting.  Catherine Keener, as usual, is outstanding as the jaded producer of kid-shows. Stopping just short of geekiness, Edward Norton plays it sincere and schmaltzy as the rhino character.  Full of caring and sharing, he says, “When my brothers and I played cowboys and Indians, I was always the Chinese railroad worker.” As the character displaced by Smoochy the Rhino, Robin Williams is as an angry, harsh, foul-mouthed lunatic. Asked by a cop if he is okay, he says, “I don't know. I'm kinda fucked up in general, so it's hard to gauge.” Leading a half-comical half-scary Irish gang, Pam Ferris sports bright red hair that I can’t believe is found in Ireland or Nature.

The movie twice uses the jaunty mambo music of Yma Sumac, so you know you’re in for a roller-coaster ride. The movie is not a satire of smarmy kid shows like Barney the Dinosaur. Nor does it satirize the corruption and back-stabbing of the corporate or entertainment world.  The plot, characters, and writing are so over the top that the movie does not have the basis in reality that a lesson or meaning needs. Screenwriter Adam Resnick takes his relentless hard-edged tone from Jonathan Swift and Ambrose Bierce, but I can’t accept it as satire, the movie has a cartoonish quality that makes it impossible to accept as having anything to do with the real world. The colors, Yma Sumac and other offbeat musicians, histrionic language, weird reflections, and odd transitions all combine to keep us off balance in a fantastical world. It’s fantasy with no fable, lesson or moral.

But the heckling starts to weary and grate at about 90-minute mark of this 110-minute movie. The salty language, the larger-than-life acting, unrestrained gestures, and the fantastical become tiring.  Lines are delivered so fast and frantic that it’s hard to catch the funnies. My Bride like the comic gang lead by evil Pam Ferris, but I ended up lying down, exhausted.

The movie generated little box office revenue. Maybe the folks got tuckered out like I did. Maybe people went to a Robin Williams movie expecting heart-warming Patch Adams, but got a relentless misanthropic loony-tune instead. One thing: the production design looks like no other movie.