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Death to Smoochy ReviewBy Kirk HoneycuttHollywood Reporter, March 15, 2002There is probably a good black comedy that can be set in the world of children's television, and it probably should have a nasty edge. But "Death to Smoochy" is not that movie. Instead "Death to Smoochy" is a loud, ugly, irritating movie without any of its satirical salvos hitting a discernible target. Watching "Smoochy," you keep asking yourself, is this film really being directed by Danny DeVito, the man who handled such pitch-perfect dark comedies as "The War of the Roses" and "Throw Momma From the Train" and the problematic yet adroitly directed "Hoffa"? A stellar cast consisting of Robin Williams, Edward Norton, Catherine Keener and DeVito will lure audiences to the multiplexes opening weekend. But look for a drop the following week once word-of-mouth gets around. In fact, the only actor who escapes with dignity intact is Keener, who somehow makes her inconsistent character work. Everyone else is over-the-top in shrill performances that are embarrassing. Williams is, curiously enough, top-billed but only a minor nuisance throughout the movie. His character does get the ball rolling, though, when his Randolph Smiley, aka Rainbow Randolph, star of a top-rated kiddies show, gets busted shaking down parents for payoffs to get their kids on his program. (You later find out that he and his cohorts are involved with corrupt charity workers, gangsters and murderers, but this is what the feds bust him for?) So Randolph gets bounced from his show, and the kiddies network head (Jon Stewart) needs a squeaky-clean host to fill the time slot. The assumption in Adam Resnick's screenplay is that everyone involved in children's TV is either venal, homicidal or drug-addicted, so the only choice devolves to a third-rate entertainer Sheldon Mopes (Norton), whose alter ego is a hot-pink rhinoceros named Smoochy. His show is an instant hit, but just as quickly he is besieged by a shady agent (DeVito), a vicious gangster (Harvey Fierstein) and, later, a former kids show host-turned-hit man (Vincent Schiavelli). But his most annoying adversary is Randolph, who develops an obsessional jealousy over Sheldon/Smoochy as if his were the only show and time slot in children's programming. Things go from bad to worse with Williams delivering the most grating performance of his career, apparently under the impression that critics of his cloying Patch Adams phase want him to play characters more along the line of Norman Bates. In defense of Williams, under DeVito's heavy-handed direction, every role is pitched to extremes. His is just the most extreme of the extremes, a self-obsessed, paranoid sociopath and misanthrope, but other than that an OK guy. Norton starts off as a sort of latter-day James Stewart character into health foods and wholesome family entertainment who gets told "You're here to sell sugar and plastic." But he refuses to understand the nature of his adversaries, preferring to exist in a fantasy world of good deeds and happy endings. Late in the movie, he says in passing that he created Smoochy in an anger management course, but this dark side never gets explored. The other actors, from Michael Rispoli as a punch-drunk former boxer and Pam Ferris as his gangster sister, are simply absurd caricatures that contain no weight either as satire or buffoonish comedy. The apparent guiding principle here is that if you mix the world of children's TV with extreme vulgarity and implications of mental illness, assassinations, dismemberment and sexual kinkiness, you have a riotous comedy. The ugliness does not confine itself to language or behavior. Howard Cummings' sets are eyesores. OK, they are probably meant to be garish, but who wants to look at this for 105 minutes? And DeVito and cinematographer Anastas Michos place their cameras at strange angles -- directly overhead or gazing up at actors' nostrils -- so that the film feels claustrophobic. Given the array of talent involved in "Smoochy," you have to write this one off to the fact that anyone can have a bad day. But what are the odds that everyone has that bad day on the same day? DEATH TO SMOOCHY
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