Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
It’s readily apparent that Danny DeVito’s Death to Smoochy deals with a thoroughly debauched children’s television host (Robin Williams) who plots, amid much dark zaniness, to destroy his squeaky-clean successor (Edward Norton). It’s also easy to proclaim it the greatest movie ever made … about a singing vegan in a fuchsia rhino suit. But is Smoochy allegorical? Instructional? Culturally remonstrative? How exactly does it speak to our collective unconscious and expose our Western zeitgeist?
To begin, we must consider Randolph Smiley (Williams), the 50-ish imp who is basically Captain Kangaroo on jet fuel. Ridiculously wealthy from his tenure on the top-rated Rainbow Randolph show, he delights brainwashed, sugar-comatose kiddies with anthems such as “Friends Come in All Sizes,” innocently crooning, Some like to toss while others to catch/One might say “grass” while the other says “snatch.” It’s a pleasure — and a relief — to announce that Williams is back in prime form in the role he plays best: the unrestrained id.
In the opposite corner we have a profoundly exaggerated personification of the superego, maliciously milked for mean yuks by screenwriter Adam Resnick. Folksinger Sheldon Mopes (Norton) is everything Randolph is not: compassionate, genuine and socially conscious. Thus, he’s broke. But he’s no slouch, sporting the homemade costume of his rhinocerine alter ego, Smoochy, and booking his own gigs in settings such as a Coney Island methadone clinic. When producer Merv Green (Harvey Fierstein) and the corporate crud of the Kidnet network finger Sheldon as a naive, substance- and felony-free patsy to fill the time slot of the fallen Randolph, the lone innocent enters the machine with predictable results that still tickle.
Smoochy trades heavily on the concept that everyone in the entertainment industry is a monster. (Resnick cut his teeth writing for Late Night With David Letterman and The Larry Sanders Show.) But fortunately, it doesn’t stop at traditional backstabbing and gluttony — Resnick has crafted an ambitious, if extremely uneven, character study. Randolph isn’t just jealous; he’s delightfully venomous. And Sheldon, whose crunchy granola philosophies could have made him a megawuss, ardently demands that Kidnet accommodate his progressive ideals. The tension works, even when some sequences (a tired Nazi rally, a dutiful Mob subplot) meander.
DeVito (Throw Momma From the Train, The War of the Roses) has an incredible knack for this material, and it’s his ability to balance the toxic, goofball heart of American television with complicated adult conflicts, particularly revenge, that brings Resnick’s script to life. With cinematographer Anastas Michos (Man on the Moon), DeVito transforms simple lewdness into grand delirium with some wonderfully strange grand-scale set pieces.
Despite all the color and frenetic energy, however, a big weird movie — consider the successful The Tall Guy — demands big, weird personae, and this cast is up to the task. Williams is spot on, as is Catherine Keener as a network executive. Norton is a bit pallid at first (he literally looks exhausted), but he soon earns Smoochy’s horns and songs. All involved knowingly serve a narrative that’s hell-bent on obliterating the precious icons that keep our pop culture from growing up. Death to Smoochy, indeed.
