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Synopsis: After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Fearless Leader, despotic ruler of Pottsylvania escapes from cartoon reruns into present day America and hatches a plot to turn Americans into zombies with bad television. Along for the ride are his two favorite henchmen: Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Who can save America from this awful fate? Moose and Squirell, of course. The FBI dispatches agent Karen Sympathy to rescue our heroes from cartoon reruns and dwindling residual checks. They embark on a cross country odyssey to thwart Fearless Leader's plans, dodging attacks by Boris and Natasha all the way.

A large portion of the satire in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is dead on target. The "sameness" of American cities, for instance, is so subtly developed that by the end of the movie, it produces genuine belly laughs. The parody of reality television shows (Made Up Stories of the Real Highway Patrol) is one of the funniest sequences in recent film. Some of the puns sprinkled liberally throughout the movie are groaners of the first order. More than that, the presence of these cartoon characters in the real world is accomplished seamlessly. We never doubt their reality beyond the fact that they are a moose and a sqirrel. All of this should work. Yet, somehow, it doesn't. It is ultimately unsatisfying.

Twenty five years further on, The Simpsons would pay homage to Rocky and Bullwinkle by having Homer J. Simpson share a middle initial with Bullwinkle J. Moose--as well it should have. Today's adult oriented cartoons owe everything to Jay Ward's creations. So it comes as something of a surprise that the new big budget revival of Rocky and Bullwinkle should try so hard to be kid-friendly. Add in a certain amount of mawkish sentimentality and you have a film that subverts its own fierce intellegence (the movie itself seems to be aware of this conflict, too, when it cuts away from one sentimental scene "not a moment too soon," as the narrator tells us). The character of Agent Karen Sympathy, who is busy trying to supress her inner child in order to succeed in the FBI, is simply ill conceived and unnecessary. Perhaps more jarring still are the live-action versions of our cartoon villains. On paper, the film is impeccably well cast. Jason Alexander makes a superb Boris Badenov, Rene Russo's impersonation of Natasha is uncanny (she reportedly plays her as a drag queen, which seems appropriate, I guess), and Robert De Niro makes a credible Fearless Leader (one wonders how De Niro, the consumate method actor, prepared for his role...). But cartoon effects simply don't work on live action characters without SERIOUS special effects (one of the few movies to get away with it is Robert Zemeckis's morbid Death Becomes Her). They look as incongruous here as they do in Altman's Popeye or Hal Needham's The Villain. This works at cross purposes to the enormous technical accomplisment of making Rocky and Bullwinkle "real."

I have to admit that I can't remember ever seeing a complete story arc from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show. Jay Ward, the show's creator, was cunning enough to dole out his adventures in fifteen minute increments that may or may not have reached a resolution in the time allowed. In between, he sprinkled other cartoon gems like Mr. Peabody and the Way Back Machine and Fractured Fairy Tales (my favorite of Ward's cartoons has Prince Charming cynically building a theme park around Sleeping Beauty's castle....), all of which were sly, socially aware satire that played better, I think, to adults than to children. The new movie version, while maintaining a certain amount of fidelity to the original, fails through the simple expedient of being an hour and a half long. I had a headache by the end of the movie. This will play better on video, I think, where it can be doled out in those descrete fifteen minute packages. The film even seems structured for this. Go figure

Mind you, this film is a LOT more enjoyable than the recent Flintstones movies. It's probably the first movie based on a television show since The Fugitive to aspire to more than just a hollow retread of its source material. But it is a fatally flawed project. I predict big trouble for Moose and Squirrel.