Death To Smoochy
A Rhino In Times Square
Yes, there is a rhino in Times Square, and that is just one of the many surreal things about Death To Smoochy. Death To Smoochy features Ed Norton as the aforementioned rhino, the lead character in an equally surreal children’s show called “Smoochy’s Magic Jungle”, that just happens to be shot in Times Square, of all places. And if you think that Times Square is a bit of a weird place for the headquarters of a children’s television network — much less a movie about a fictional children’s television network — then you’re beginning to get the whole idea behind Death To Smoochy.
In a movie universe that thrives on the predictable, the derivative, and the familiar, Death To Smoochy is an anarchic shot in the arm, a victory for the odd and different, a living testament to the power of the eccentric and the strange. The fact that it isn’t very good is almost beside the point. Once a movie is willing to put a rhino — especially a furry, fuschia rhino with a guitar — in the middle of Times Square, well, then anything can happen, and almost does.
Death To Smoochy takes a weird comic turn even before the opening credits start. The logical, reasonable place for Death To Smoochy to begin is with a parent, let’s say, a person in a house with one or more very small children and a tape recorder, a person, who, for the (dear God) thousandth time has to watch that… that thing, that horrible purple beast up there, chuckling in that particular way, singing those insipid, didactic songs, and know that the children just… well, just love this foam rubber monstrosity, this singing, dancing, smirking hobgoblin, and love it so much that, if they could, they would watch the same videotapes again and again until their brains turned to melted vanilla milkshakes and ran out their ears, and still, they would watch, over and over, the same songs, the same annoying little giggle, the same vacant grinning purple face, over and over again, forever, and for the love of sweet suffering Jesus, can’t something be done about the quality of children’s television before we all go STARK SCREAMING RAVING MAD!!!
That’s where I would have bet Death To Smoochy was going, and considering the number of Barney the Dinosaur tapes my nephew goes through, it would have been a good bet.
Instead, we get Robin Williams dressed up in a sparkly latex jacket with shiny rainbow spangles, singing and dancing, which in its own way is just as horrible.
Death To Smoochy is a revenge comedy, but not the way you might think. When Williams loses his job as “Rainbow Randolph”, top-rated children’s host and prince of Rainbowland, he is replaced by Norton’s Smoochy the Rhino. Williams conceives a maniacal hatred for Norton, not because he is annoying, not because he is insipid, not because he is politically correct in an annoying and insipid way, but because he is successful, and that, of course, is the unkindest cut of all.
But Rainbow Randolph and his bizarre, showy revenge plots are more or less a sideshow. The real surreal action involves Norton, who we first see with his guitar and his homemade costume, singing a happy tune in the place where you’d least expect happy tunes to be sung. We later find out that Norton is guileless, stubborn, and obsessed with health food. “You would not believe the time I had convincing them to carry soy dogs,” he tells us at the Nathan’s on Coney Island, which nicely encapsulates his character.
Unlike Williams, who is just playing the ten-thousandth variation of his stand-up gig, Norton turns in an interesting, nuanced performance. It’s almost like he’s doing a Matthew McConaghey imitation; he has the Austin hippie thing down so much that you almost expect to see him sitting around naked playing the bongo drums at one point. There’s not much to his character, but you have to give any actor credit who has the courage to dress up in a fuschia rhino suit, strap on ice skates, and be chased by a horde of little people waving swastika flags.
Norton is faced with two groups of enemies in Death To Smoochy, one real and one surreal. The first is represented by Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich), a hard-bitten network executive with no enthusiasm for anything about “Smoochy’s Magic Jungle” except the marketing possibilities. (Keener is a positive delight in this film, smart, sarcastic and funny, but Death To Smoochy inexplicably assigns her to a thankless The Girl role for no good reason halfway through the film.) Norton, however, disdains all marketing ties, fearing that selling Smoochy-brand cola and frosted cereal will help turn children into aggressive consumers and poison them with refined sugar. (Everyone at the studio is horrified by this, as well they should be; at last check, Barney was a hundred million dollar a year business.)
If Death To Smoochy had continued in this vein, as a behind-the-scenes look at kid’s TV and corporate marketing to children, it would have had the opportunity to be brilliant. Unfortunately, Death To Smoochy brings in another set of villains that are much more nonsensical. Death To Smoochy confronts Norton with not one but two sets of mobsters. There’s the brass-knuckle charity organization headed up by Harvey Fierstein, of all people, and a grotesque Irish mob family that lobbies Norton to find a place for a punch-drunk ex-boxer on the “Smoochy’s Magic Jungle” show.
Death To Smoochy was released on the same day as a Barry Sonnenfeld interview in the New York Times. Sonnenfeld was interviewed while watching Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove, and made the point that the movie only works because none of the characters know that they’re in a comedy. If the characters had that knowledge, then they’d try to act in funny ways, which would destroy the film. In Death To Smoochy, some of the actors don’t know they’re in a comedy, but most of them have a pretty good idea. There’s just enough bad acting and mugging for the camera to turn Death To Smoochy from a decent black comedy to a hit-and-miss proposition.
Death To Smoochy is a brave, risk-taking movie. Unfortunately, taking risks means that sometimes you fail. Death To Smoochy fails far more often than it succeeds. Death To Smoochy should be credited with the courage to put a rhino in Times Square, but it would be a better movie if it had any idea what to do with the rhino once it got there.