*Spoiler alert!* Don’t read if you care about spoiling the storyline to the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” or the novel "Who Censored Roger Rabbit." Or if you don’t want to ruin your favorite childhood not-Bugs bunny.
My favorite movie is “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a 1988 film produced by Steven Spielberg and released by Disney. It’s literally older than me and I grew up with it. The movie centers on Roger Rabbit, a cartoon bunny, trying to clear his name of murder with the help of Detective Eddie Valiant, where they exist in a world in which cartoons characters and humans co-exist. In the movie, Eddie Valiant is hired by R. K. Maroon, who owns Roger’s acting contract and needs Roger to get his mind back on work, to take pictures of the smokin’ hot Jessica Rabbit, a humanoid toon, and Roger’s wife, playing “pattycake” with Marvin Acme. Upon showing Roger the pictures (in which Jessica is literally playing pattycake, the hand game you do with children), he presumably goes and murders Acme for getting “pattycake” on with his wife. The next time we see Roger, he is showing up at Detective Valiant’s office(/place of residence) and telling him he didn’t commit the murder and needs help clearing his name.
Through Eddie’s stalking and detective work, it turns out that Judge Doom wanted to buy up Toon Town, where all the toons live, and turn it into a highway. But wait! Judge Doom (the name seems kinda ominous in and of itself, right?) is actually a toon! And a demented one at that. He killed Acme, the owner of Toontown, so the land would go up for sale and staged the photos of Jessica Rabbit and Marvin Acme playing “pattycake” to frame Roger for murder.
The movie ends with the happy ending of the bad guy dying, Acme’s will showing up and leaving Toontown to the toons (no more baddies coming in to buy it up!), and Jessica Rabbit taking Roger home to “bake him a carrot cake.” Take that last part as you will.
It’s an overall sweet family movie. Which of course it is since it was released by Disney in the ‘80s. But as such in the ‘80s, there are a few more things that can no longer be gotten away with by today’s standards. The word “damn;” Eddie’s consistent drinking; Baby Herman’s line of “I have a 50 lust in a 3-year-old dinky,” typically cut from TV presentations and him smoking cigars; and of course, Jessica’s obvious sexuality. She first displayed it at a night club with her dancing about wanting a sugar daddy, let alone the fact that her body leaves no room for organs and much else besides mammary glands. As a kid, I liked that it was real to life. Adults around me used mild swear words, my mom smoked, a beer here and there between good friends was fine as long as you were old enough and being beautiful, sexy and classy were something girls may choose to strive for (when they were much older than however old I was when I first started watching it). Also, it wasn’t based on a gushy romance, like much of Disney and children’s movies overall. I hated gushy romance.
The movie is pretty child-friendly compared to the book.
When comparing the film, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” and the book, "Who Censored Roger Rabbit," written by Gary Wolf, it’s quicker to count the things that aren’t different than to count the things that are. Namely, Eddie Valiant, Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, and Baby Herman are all still characters, although Eddie Valiant and Baby Herman are the only ones truly like their move-adaption selves, Eddie Valiant likes a stiff drink and keeps whiskey at his office, and they live in a world where humans and toons coexist. And people get murdered as a major plot point. That’s it for similarities.
To summarize the book, Jessica Rabbit has recently divorced Roger Rabbit and went back to her ex, Rocco DeGreasy. Roger goes to Detective Eddie Valiant to have him snoop around and find what happened. Roger sternly believes that Jessica was coerced into leaving him, and he’s also heard rumors that people want to buy his contract from DeGreasy Cartoons.
Soon into Eddie going around and fleshing things out, Rocco DeGreasy, the brains and half of the head of DeGreasy Cartoons, shows up murdered in his own home. Hours later, Roger shows up shot and murdered in his own house as well. (That certainly doesn’t happen in the movie.) The police figure Roger murdered Rocco over Jessica and that Jessica murdered Roger to get revenge. Case closed. That is, until Roger shows up at Detective Valiant’s office wanting him to clear his name.
But wait? Isn’t Roger Rabbit dead? Well, yes and no. In the book’s universe, toons can create “doppelgangers,” doppels for short, of themselves. These are basically creations the toons make of themselves that are copies, appearance-wise but lacking the memories of their original and any personality in general. They also disintegrate within just a few hours. They’re used as a stunt double when recording dangerous scenes, as toons can be killed just the same as humans are in the book.
The “Roger Rabbit” that shows up at Mr. Valiant’s is a doppel of the original; however, he has all the memories of the original and will last 24-48 hours because of all the concentration and energy the original Roger Rabbit put into him.
Eddie and Roger go around trying to solve the murder of Roger, and hopefully clear Roger’s name of Rocco’s murder. All the while, Roger is still pining over Jessica, who could care less about him. Also, many of the characters seem concerned about some teapot that was in Roger’s possession.
When it all goes up and comes down, it turns out that the teapot contained a magical genie who would grant three wishes to any toon who uttered the magical words “May your dreams come true,” but the genie got sick of serving others and decided to shoot anyone who called upon him.
The book reaches a climax when Dominick DeGreasy, other head and half of DeGreasy Cartoons, is found dead after the genie was released and shot him. Detective Valiant is the one who finds Dominick and the genie, still out of his “lamp.” The genie admits to having killed Roger, and Eddie coerces the genie into producing a suicide note from Dominick, admitting that he ‘killed himself over the guilt of killing his brother and then killing and framing Roger’. Eddie then kills the genie by dropping him in a saltwater tank of fish because the genie could only be killed by being overpowered in hand-to-hand combat and being dropped in the ocean. (Close enough.)
Valiant turns the evidence into the police, clearing the names of Roger and Jessica. That just leaves one question: Who killed Rocco DeGreasy?
Roger.
The doppel of Roger spills all as he lays on Eddie’s couch, disintegrating. The original Roger made him as an alibi when he went out and killed Rocco. Meanwhile, the doppel was buying red suspenders at 12:30 at night, something a shopkeeper would remember very clearly. The doppel, who was made with much energy to make him last long enough for the task, calls the real Roger after and gives him the name of the shop, a solid alibi for the rabbit. The doppel is then to get the murder weapon from Roger’s home and plant it in Eddie Valiant’s office. Rocco dead. Roger not suspected of murder. And Jessica free to be with Roger. Close enough to perfect plan, until the genie killed Roger.
I could deal with these plot differences between the book and the movie. It actually kind of made it fun, having two different stories. What ruined it all for me was how different Jessica Rabbit and Roger Rabbit were in the movies compared to their true, book counterparts.
As elaborated on in the summary, Roger was actually a criminal mastermind and murderer. Throughout the whole investigation, he played Eddie like a fiddle and played himself off as a complete dope, making it believable he’d never be capable of murder.
Jessica is still a completely sexy humanoid toon. In the movie, she tells Detective Valiant that “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” She may come off as a superficial bimbo in the movie, but that couldn’t be further from the case. She is a loving wife who would do “anything” for her husband. In the book, she tells Detective Valiant that “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” She may come off as a superficial bimbo in the book, and that’s exactly correct. She’s a complete gold-digger (some speculated that she murdered Rocco himself for inheritance), only out for herself. She only dates humans and other humanoid toons; she only married Roger because of the magic of the genie. In the book, Jessica gets her start in the cartoon comic industry by appearing in a pornographic comic, Lewd, Crude, and in the Mood. (Guess Disney didn’t want to put that in their film.) She offers to sleep with Detective Valiant in exchange for him finding the teapot(/genie lamp) for her, and when he says he has it, she responds “My place or yours?”
I always loved Jessica Rabbit as a kid, but I didn’t know why. As I’ve grown up, I still love her. I love her because she’s so sexy yet classy. She’s powerful, even if it includes using her sex appeal to her advantage. And she marries Roger for love and because he makes her laugh! She’s so sexy and deep in the movie, yet in the book, she’s just out for herself and uses her sexuality as a manipulation technique. And Roger being a criminal mastermind capable of murder?! It was just too much for my childhood to handle.
So now you know the dark secrets of "Who Censored Roger Rabbit" as well as knowing “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” The message here is to not play around with magical genies, and if you decide to read the book behind your favorite movie, prepare yourself for the possibility of heartbreak.
