Review of Death to Smoochy (2002) by Gareth R — 28 Oct 2009

In Death To Smoochy, the cheery world of children's television is really a seedy lair of violence and villainy. This simple juxtaposition is all the movie's got. Three minutes into the film, TV icon Rainbow Randolph (Robin Williams) is indicted for corruption. He's sleazy, he swears all the time, and his happy themesong includes the merchandising disclaimer "It's not free." We get it: kids' TV sucks. Sadly, the film's one joke has played out before we even meet Smoochy.

Randolph's replacement is the deeply inoffensive Sheldon Mopes (Edward Norton): a preaching goodie-goodie dressed up as a pink rhino. He's the anti-Randolph, intended to be everything that's squeaky-clean about children's television. (He's the only one still interested in making children happy, etc.) The film bungles this idea, however, tossing in hints of Mopes' troubled past and a few moments of near-psychotic flip-out. Perhaps those simply come with the territory when hiring Edward Norton; either way, Mopes should be the positive for all the film's negatives, but it can't even get that right. (Still, most of the time Smoochy's just irritating, so perhaps those odd character moments are there to keep us awake.).

Actually, all the characterisation is off. The villains of the piece are a charity (har har!), The Parade Of Hope, but when they're got out of the way (far too easily as it happens), suddenly Sheldon's sleazy agent (Danny DeVito) starts behaving like a villainous mastermind. The film forgets that he's just a link in the chain, as afraid of The Parade Of Hope as everyone else. The same goes for poor Jon Stewart, who has no clear intentions at all as the exec who hires Smoochy, but winds up with the same grisly fate as DeVito anyway. Catherine Keener plays a grumpy exec who falls for Sheldon, only apparently this is completely unrelated to her earlier groupie fixation with every one of his predecessors. (Yeah, right.) Also, despite being a Grade A bitch - which is arguably what Keener portrays best - it turns out she's just upset because there's so much corruption in kids' TV, and yearns for good morals and people as clear-cut as Sheldon. This is not only unbelievable, but it doesn't even work thanks to the aforementioned muddy construction of his character.

The worst character arc is Randolph's, however. For the most part, he's Death To Smoochy's only real source of laughs: a bottomless pit of profanity and grossness, Williams just keeps sinking lower as the disgusting icon with a hate fixation for Smoochy. He'll either make you laugh or give up on the movie altogether. But he has a severe change of heart later on that doesn't ring true at all, not least because it closely resembles a lot of fake changes of heart he pretended to have earlier. The movie's entire final act, with Randolph turning into somebody else and Sheldon following suit, sees the movie completely forget what it's trying to say, if anything.

And that's the killing stroke. The film is making this obvious, one-note joke about kids' television: what if it was, like, corrupt and stuff. It's a surface joke. There's nothing going on underneath, so like it or lump it. But by the end, somehow you've got no idea what it was about. The film plays it safe, has its cake and eats it, at the expense of a clear punchline.

It does manage to provoke a few laughs, but there's no great satire going on here, and any real point is long gone by the end. Death To Smoochy is awkwardly and bluntly amusing at best, thanks mostly to the foulmouthed Williams throwing himself down flights of stairs and verbally abusing everyone he meets. But let's not forget Edward Norton, whose career thus far has painted him as such a dangerous psycho that he can't even put on a pink rhino suit without seeming like he might kill somebody in it. There's got to be a funny satirical point in there somewhere, but you're asking the wrong movie to find it.