Defining Favourites: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Robert Zemeckis's live action-animation hybrid mystery comedy remains as mind-blowing as it was in 1988.

Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

All my Defining Favourites articles are paywalled as I need to make an income from what I write. If you like what you are seeing here and want to continue supporting what I do, please consider a paid subscription.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Screenplay by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman, based on the novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? By Gary K. Wolf
Produced by Frank Marshall, Robert Watts
Starring Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Charles Fleischer, Stubby Kaye, Joanna Cassidy
Premiere Date: June 21, 1988
Running Time: 104 minutes

When looking back at the films that most impacted me most when watched as a child, I still vividly remember first watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit and being blown away by the manner in which it puts cartoon characters in the same space as real human beings. But even knowing the technological limitations that would be present in the 1980’s, perhaps the most impressive thing about Who Framed Roger Rabbit is not just that the film holds up beautifully. Instead, it’s all present in the commitment to making sure that this world is indeed believable. For myself at 10 years old, it was every dream come true.

All this feels like a child’s dream on the screen especially because cartoon characters exist alongside real human beings through a certain kind of technical mastery that Robert Zemeckis achieves here. Yet our eyes into this world are no less human than what we see out of Bob Hoskins’s Eddie Valiant, a hardened private eye who resents “toons” (the term for cartoon characters in this world). It all works to create a picture of Los Angeles as many would remember from the 1940’s, but the greatness of Who Framed Roger Rabbit does not stop or end at this mastery as much as it is in recreating a time period so as to make this whole world as believable as possible.