Death to Smoochy (2002)

Despite a generally negative critical reception upon its initial release, the dark comedy Death to Smoochy has amassed something of a cult film status over the years. For some reason I was expecting the film to be more of a conventional satire, though it actually has little insightful to say about the world of children's entertainment, which is the filed in which its story plays out. Disgraced kiddie show host  "Rainbow" Randolph Smiley (Robin Williams) builds up a murderous rage against his replacement, nice guy in a rhino costume Sheldon Mopes (Edward Norton) and plots to take him down. The movie really takes its first third or so to set up its concept, and during this part of the film I wasn't really enjoying it, its was mostly awkward, events seemed to be going really fast and I couldn't make out the shape of what this movie was trying to be. Even as its intent got to be clearer to me I would still say the movie is misshapen, there is an unevenness to it that never goes away. Two things provide the movie a narrative through line on which to grab hold, one is the intentional ridiculousness of its premise. Pre-school programing as a world ripe with organized crime, graft, vendettas, and composed almost entirely of unsavory characters, the juxtaposition is at least amusing. Second you have Edward Norton's absolute commitment to his character, squeaky clean, somewhat (but not over much) naïve, and the implication between the lines that Mopes was once a very angry man, whose Smoochy the Rhino character serves as a kind of self therapy. The arc of Nora Wells relationship with Smoochy is perhaps too spot on, but Catherine Keener mostly sells. I understand both how people can hate this movie and how some can love it, I'd have to peg my feelings about the film somewhere in between. The conceit of the film often works better in theory then in practice, but the audacity of the attempt has its own satisfactions. Jon Stewarts hair in this though, is really just awful. **1/2