Great premise and a bad delivery for DeVito’s latest.
The only thing that Captain Kangaroo might have inadvertently pushed was an increased sale in ping-pong balls and other ping-pong related products, but in today’s merchandising market the television tube and its nut-ball creators have become the crack-dealer for generations of impressionable breakfast-cereal-eating-youths who tug away on the long GAP skirts of their mothers and ask for everything embroidered in their current fun-time mascot. Danny DeVito’s Death to Smoochy is like Sesame street on acid, with an extremely promising premise of the “bastard son of Barney” as the targeted foamy pink rhino attracting the wrong kind of attention. You’d expect this to be an off-the-wall comedy, and there are a handful of genuinely funny moments such as the failed sabotage of the Smoochy cookie and the theme of Smoochy’s ice show, but I would have done without the multiple storylines that jump a little too much over the map with one unimportant and badly edited scene to another.
The storyline’s inclusion of the crime underworld a la Analyze This is unappealing and no where as humorous as the cheesy children’s television programming gizmos and the sing-a-long songs of battling crack addiction. Possibly, DeVito could have toned down on the subplots- keeping the vengeful acts to a minimum and get more bang out of the ensemble cast which would make any director beam, but unfortunately the overall performances don’t generate the same kind of enthusiasm as seen in the cast’s previous performances in similar type roles. Robin Williams (Good Will Hunting) as the psychotic Rainbow Randolph Smiley could have come across a little more interesting with a more detailed explanation of his hatred and state of desperation being paralleled with the rise in Smoochy’s success, plus DeVito only uses a meager percentage of Williams off-the-wall theatrics which could have made for a more zanier performance. Edward Norton (Keeping the Faith) is hardly convincing in his role as the ultra Good Samaritan and it takes an effort to believe in the characterization where as Catherine Keener (Your Friends & Neighbors) as Nora the producer uses her sharp tongue with plenty of conviction, but with the film’s progression she fizzles out into this molded and boring figurine.
Death to Smoochy is by far the best comedy of the new year, but somewhere down the middle, this considerably outrageous concept for a film loses the panache and almost tranquilizes itself with a overflow of mundane twists and turns and sub-par performances which could have been replaced by more fun with the foamy pink creatures and angry midgets to make this the delicious romp that it had the potential to become.
