A To Z Blogging Chsllenge 2025: Mysteries: W is for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Poster. Fair Usage

 You have probably, at one time or another, heard the sentence, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” It’s become a classic line, even if you haven’t seen the film. 

It comes from a 1980s film called Who Framed Roger Rabbit? starring Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant, a private eye in a 1947 Hollywood in which humans and animated cartoon characters called toons live side by side. The toons live in Toontown and get work in animated features. 

Roger Rabbit is a cartoon rabbit and has stressed out because he thinks his beautiful human toon wife, Jessica Rabbit, is unfaithful. It starts with Valiant being called in by Roger’s boss to find out if this is true and take photos. He’s not keen on the job, but needs the money to repay a loan, so agrees. The joke is that “playing patty cake” is literal - the photos show Jessica playing patty cake with her hands, as in “Patty cake, patty cake, baker’s man…” with the supposed lover, owner of Toontown. This still upsets Roger, who stresses out and says how he feels.

Next day, the man is found dead, killed by a falling piano, toon-style, with Roger accused of murder, and Valiant has to find out who really committed the crime before the villain can execute him.  

This isn’t by any means the first film with a combination of animation and live action, but it’s very cleverly done. There are Disney characters and Mel Blanc voices his various characters, such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. There is a warehouse for various Acme products - remember Acme from the Roadrunner cartoons, where the Coyote is constantly ordering stuff from them? At one point, Valiant makes use of a portable hole.

It’s a tribute to classic Hollywood animation.

The director is Robert Zemeckis of Back To The Future fame, and even has Christopher Lloyd as the villain. The role of Jessica Rabbit - the one who gets that famous line - is voiced by Kathleen Turner, who has a distinctive voice, but for some reason she isn’t credited. 

I hope you don’t mind my using a film, but I did need a W post and I haven’t read the novel on which it’s based. 

This is a day late, but I was unable to get it done yesterday and I wasn’t doing the weekend anyway. Next post, on Xtras, is Monday. See you then!