In an age when respected actors are sharing screen time with completely computer-generated characters and studios are trying hard to get Oscar nominations for the digital performer, it's easy to forget how groundbreaking the interaction of live people and their animated counterparts once was.

Though the combination of live action and animation had been done before, it often produced very stilted, static results. The real innovation of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (104 minutes, Touchstone Home Entertainment, rated PG) was the sense of life conveyed not only by the characters (be they flesh or paint) but also by the film itself.

When cartoon gagman Marvin Acme (yes, that Acme) is murdered, the evidence points to Maroon Cartoon Studios star Roger Rabbit. It seems that Acme was recently found fooling around with Jessica, Roger's voluptuous wife. With the law on his tail, Roger turns to toon-hating detective Eddie Valiant to find the real culprit and clear his alliterative name.

Though the storyline is cribbed from Roman Polanski's Chinatown, it's still handled well. Bob Hoskins puts on a fedora and an American accent to play the washed-up Valiant, and it's his pantomime skills that really sell the performances of the cartoon citizenry. He makes the audience believe that there really is a four-foot-tall blob of ink and paint in the room with him.

One of the film's greatest accomplishments is that it brought together classic cartoons from competing studios. The film was ultimately a Disney baby, so there was no trouble getting Mickey, Donald or Goofy; it was only through the efforts of Steven Spielberg that Bugs, Daffy and even Betty Boop could share the screen with them, though there were some classics who wouldn't show up; Popeye must've been out at sea during filming. The odds of Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny ever again sharing a single animation cel are abysmal at best, which is just another reason why Roger Rabbit is such a classic.

Though Roger Rabbit was available previously on a fairly empty disc, it's been completely repackaged for this two-disc Vista Series DVD. Vista is Disney's high-end label, honoring films with the best in vision, imagination, style, theme and artistry by combining premium sound and picture quality with hours of bonus material in ornate collectible packaging.

The first disc boasts a "Family Friendly" presentation of the film - which, in this case, seems to mean that the menus are difficult to decipher, the bonus materials are superficial and the film is presented in a fullscreen format. The disc's sole saving grace is that it presents the three progressively lackluster Roger Rabbit shorts Disney commissioned in the wake of the film's success: "Tummy Trouble," "Rollercoaster Rabbit" and "Trail Mix-Up."

Just as Toontown is home to Hollywood's animated denizens, Disc Two is home to the set's best features. The movie has been fully restored and remastered, and is presented in a brightly detailed widescreen with a soundtrack worthy of the film's Oscar-winning mix.

There's an informative full-length commentary with director Robert Zemeckis, producer Frank Marshall, screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman, producer Steve Starkey and visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston, though at times everyone seems more concerned with introducing themselves than actually discussing their work.

Any informational slack in the commentary is definitely picked up by the pop-up trivia of "Toontown Confidential" which not only gives the answers to such questions as why there's no question mark in the film's title, but also provides a heads up for any impending freeze frame fun.

A note for folks familiar with the type of... shall we say "older" material often hidden in films by Disney animators: though DVD offers the sort of frame-by-frame advance needed to fully appreciate these gags, a lot of them have been scrubbed away by the PC efforts of Michael Eisner's Disney.

"Behind the Ears" is a half-hour documentary that details the production through archival footage and new interviews. The special features are completed by a deleted "Pig Head Sequence" a brief feature about the giant rubber "Toon Stand-Ins" used for blocking and pacing purposes, an interactive gallery in "The Valiant Files" and a before-and-after comparison of raw footage to finished film.

I had forgotten just how enjoyable Who Framed Roger Rabbit is. Of course, I don't think I've seen it since it was in theatres in 1988, so I'm watching it on an entirely different level than before. Though it is a cartoon, it's rated PG for a reason; there is a fair amount of violence and innuendo tossed around.

In a time when computers threaten to replace traditional cel-painted animation, Roger Rabbit's toon genocide plot seems more timely now than it did in its initial release. Where critics previously had to stretch to find the heart of this allegorical Harlem, it's now quite apparent: this type of cartoon is facing extinction, with fewer fingerprints and more pixels in every successive Disney film.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD