Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Complete Season 1

• ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE & FRIENDS-SEASON 1 (DVD MOVIE)

Watch out American television viewers! Rocky and Bullwinkle do battle against Boris Badenov's band of TV antennae-eating rodents. Full color.Bullwinkle J. Moose has the world's largest collection of box tops, which makes him the prime suspect when someone starts redeeming counterfeit box tops for goodies in the stores.ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE - DVD MovieThe problem with live-action movies based on beloved cartoon characters is that humans are never as flexible, as unpredictable, or just plain as goofy as their animated counterparts. So it is with this blend of animation and live action. Rocky and Bullwinkle remain animated characters (trapped in our reality), while Boris and Natasha (Jason Alexander and Rene Russo), along with their boss, Fearless Leader (Robert De Niro), are transformed from cartoons to human reproductions when! they escape from rerun land. They've come to our world to take it over; the FBI springs Rocky and Bullwinkle from the second dimension to stop them. But the writing in Kenneth Lonergan's script lacks the throw-away flair of the jokes that characterized Jay Ward's much-beloved animated series of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Part of the problem is that Russo, Alexander, and De Niro are so obviously working at acting cartoonish, instead of simply being cartoons. And part is that the script rarely comes up with the kind of wonderful wordplay in which Ward specialized. The moose, as usual, gets all the best lines, but they're too few and far between to salvage this underachieving summer film. --Marshall FineMost of the tape is devoted to the misadventures of that sterling hero, Dudley Do-Right of the RCMP. In one cartoon, Dudley, Snidely Whiplash, Nell, and Inspector Fenwick succumb to the show-biz bug and form a vaudeville act. Even funnier is Snidely confessing ! to having "a thing" about tying ladies to railroad tracks. He! 's ready to give himself up, but Nell defends him in a courtroom performance that Portia might envy. Rounding out the program is a visit to the first Mountie by Sherman and Mr. Peabody, Aesop and Son's retelling of "The Hound and the Wolf," and the Fractured Fairy Tale of "The Frog Prince." Rocky and Bullwinkle make only cameo appearances in this collection that includes Mr. Know-It-All explaining how to be a stuntman--er, moose. Also, Bullwinkle enacts "Simple Simon" with Boris as the pie man, but the nursery rhyme quickly degenerates into a variation on Abbot and Costello's "Who's on First" routine. The Jay Ward cartoons are always fun to watch, but at 39 minutes, this tape seems a bit brief. Fans who watch credits may not realize that executive producer "Ponsonby Britt" never existed: Ward and Bill Scott needed one at some point, so they made him up. --Charles SolomonIn order to steal a priceless collection of art masterpieces from a Paris museum, archvillain! s Boris and Natasha fold the unframed paintings up, put them in a small package, and mail them to a certain moose in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota--figuring that only Bullwinkle would be stupid enough to sell them the paintings back. Ah, the classic world of Jay Ward animation! The compilation Painting Theft demonstrates what makes Rocky & Bullwinkle unique among cartoons: their elaborate, episodic storytelling. Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera cartoons relied almost exclusively on single situations and freewheeling slapstick, but Rocky & Bullwinkle stories stretched on and on, with snaky, absurd twists. Not only did this allow the animators to come up with a wide variety of jokes and puns (terrible, terrible puns), but it also let them delight in the sheer joys of storytelling--how rapidly and deliriously they could gallop from one silly circumstance to the next. Even the shorter cartoons (Dudley Do-Right, Peabody's Improbable History, and Fractured Fairy Tales) are pack! ed with wild reversals and ridiculous turns. Plus, they used s! ome supe rb voice talent (including Edward Everett Horton, a great character actor best known for supporting roles in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals), and had an eye for sneaky satire of the adult world--as can be seen when Bullwinkle's whitewashed canvases spark an insane bidding war in the art world. Rocky & Bullwinkle are a consistent pleasure. --Bret FetzerNow here's something you don't see everyday, Chauncey. It's the complete first season of one of television's smartest, savviest, and most subversively funny animated series, ranked by TV Guide as one of the top 50 series of all time. Like the animators at Warner Bros.' Termite Terrace (birthplace of Porky, Daffy, and Bugs), producer Jay Ward, his partner Bill Scott (the voice of Bullwinkle), and the cracked writing staff did not write down to children. The dialogue is witty and sharply satiric. Characters break the "fourth wall" between the screen and the audience. They make sly references to the show's ! creators and the television network. They hurl barbs of mass destruction at Washington, D.C. politicians. And then there are the godawful puns. This four-disc set contains the series' first two serial adventures. "Jet Fuel Formula" is a cold war-era blast, as Rocky (voiced by June Foray, the Queen of Cartoons) and Bullwinkle frantically race to re-create a rocket fuel recipe (actually Grandma Bullwinkle's recipe for mooseberry fudge cake), while being menaced by those no-goodniks Boris Badenov and femme fatale Natasha. "Box Top Robbery" reveals that the basis for the world's economy is not gold and silver, but cereal box tops.

Linking these cliffhanging episodes are such hilarious segments as "Fractured Fairy Tales," which upend familiar storybook favorites (Red Riding Hood, for example, is a predatory fur merchant after the unwitting wolf), "Mr. Peabody," the canine genius who travels through time in the company of his boy, Sherman, and forthright Dudley Do-Right of ! the Mounties, who must contend with his own horse for the affe! ctions o f sweet Nell. Bullwinkle gets extra credits as Mr. Know-It-All and as the host of Poetry Corner. And watch him pull a rabbit out of his hat! These cartoons are as fresh and funny as when they first aired more than four decades ago. Boomer-era adults will be amazed at the jokes that no doubt soared over their heads as children. --Donald Liebenson