Customer Reviews

Who Censored Roger Rabbit

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first saw the movie based on this book, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," in 1988. I loved it, and after many repeat video viewings it became my No. 1 favorite movie of all time, and remains so to this day. I still catch new jokes everytime I watch (now on DVD).

Well, I finally decided to read this book. One thing's for sure, It's Not the Movie. Eddie Valiant, Roger, Jessica and Baby Herman are still here, but only their basic character traits (Eddie's alcoholism, Jessica's buxomness) are the same. The movie-makers adapted just one line of dialogue for the movie (Baby Herman's "I've got a 50-year-old lust and a 3-year-old dinky").

That's where the similarities end. This book deals with comic strip actors, not cartoon actors. When the 'toons speak, they make word balloons that very creatively reflect their emotions, and can be manipulated physically as well. Additional characters include a comic strip photographer, brother owners of a cartoon syndicate, a porn-cartoon syndicate owner, and a ton of colorful cameos.

The book touches more on the human/'toon discrimination hinted at in the movie, but not much. Rather, it's just a good ol' fashioned Sam Spade-esque simile-rich read that enthralled me page by page. Warning: those familiar with the simple, sweet Roger from the movie may be a little shocked by the ending!

This is the cult classic which inspired the film "Who framed Roger Rabbit" but the original book is much darker and more adult in tone than the film - and in spite of the fact that half the characters are "toons," much less cartoonish.

This is set in an alternative Hollywood in which cartoon characters or "toons" are real. Unlike the film however, they are neither industructible nor immortal. In the book, a toon can generate a temporary "doppelganger" duplicate of himself or herself, and these expendable copies are used as stunt doubles for all the dangerous or lethal work in films. A toon in this book who is hit by a bullet will die just as easily as a human.

The narrator and central character is P.I. Eddie Valiant - Bob Hoskin's character in the film. Other characters who were translated recognisably to the film from the book include cartoon comedy star Roger Rabbit, his humanoid toon wife Jessica Rabbit, and toon star Baby Herman.

As in the film, Eddie Valiant is hired by Roger Rabbit for a number of reasons including marital problems - in the book his beautiful wife Jessica has left him for his agent, Rocco DeGreasy. Roger wants her back, and believes Rocco has put pressure on her to leave him. At first he seems to be talking nonsense.

But a few chapters into the book, both Roger and Rocco are murdered. The police - human and toon divisions - think Roger killed his agent and Jessica murdered him in revenge. Shortly before he died Roger Rabbit created a doppelganger; this double persuades Eddie Valiant to look for evidence that both Jessica and his late self were innocent of the murders.

Eddie sets out to clear Roger and Jessica - with zany results.

A clever black comedy - well worth a read. The film was technically brilliant, but this original is a much cleverer story.

Caveat emptor: aside from the story setting -- a world in which humans and Toons coexist in the real world -- and a handful of character names, this book has pretty much nothing to do with the film WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?

The book is not particularly well-written. It's not awful, but it's just not very good. The majority of it goes like this: our detective narrator, Eddie Valiant, gets Character 1's side of the story. He then goes to Character 2 and repeats this story to them. Character 2 balks and tells him a different version of the story. Valiant returns to Character 1, reviews the story as Character 1 told it and then tells Character 1 what Character 2 had to say about all this and this happens over and over again, getting pretty tedious after a while. Wolf/Valiant never skip past with a "I told him the information I got from the girl," it's always reiterated in complete detail. The book could probably be cut by half just by removing overly redundant detail, but then I guess we wouldn't get all the descriptions of what the Toons' word bubbles look like. (In this version, the Toons are comic strip Toons, not movie Toons.)

Valiant is a pushover -- he'll believe whatever anyone says to him until someone else contradicts it, and then he'll believe THEM at face value until further notice. This would be funny if it were being played that way, with Valiant being a too-nice poseur of a P.I., but the book seems to think it's presenting him as being appropriately hardnosed. Several times it's noted that he is a former Marine and he's constantly drinking some kind of alcoholic beverage -- in a world where Toons are living breathing creatures, it's a little sad that the author seems to have spent the bulk of his creative efforts in coming up with a new metaphor to describe Valiant taking a drink every time he does so.

There's an attempt to make humans vs. Toons some kind of racial allegory. Their police forces are segregated, with humans handling human cases and Toons handling Toons exclusively, and there's a brief and pointless scene where Eddie's weekly poker game bails on him when Roger shows up ("That was the deal: no women and no Toons"). But this is never really explored, or much utilized, it's just kind of a superficial gloss over the proceedings. Eddie is clearly different because he doesn't mind Toons as much, but the book never goes into why, just occasionally pats him on the head for being such a good guy on the inside.

The plot is kind of all over the place and contains no fewer than three flagrant deus ex machinas in the third act. The formatting was decent in the Kindle edition but there were some OCR errors and a new character's dialogue does not always start a new paragraph. The characters don't have distinct voices and it can be momentarily confusing, and when this happens repeatedly over the course of the entire book, it becomes a little aggravating.

I give it one star for being readable, another star for a great concept, and a third star for inspiring a film that did a much better job of leveraging the concept and its opportunities. It's $2, so it's not a big financial loss if you get curious and pick it up, but you could probably find better things to do with your time.

First off, let me state that I am big Roger Rabbit fan. When I found out that the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" was based on a book, I searched for it. After searching for a while, I finally purchased a copy. I started to regret buying it at first because I was worried I would not like it. While waiting for the book to arrive, I continued to read reviews, which all said basically the same thing: IT IS NOT LIKE THE MOVIE. This review will do nothing more than basically repeat what everyone else has already said, but I like to give my opinion. It may help someone decide to buy it or not.

With that said, I will continued onto the review. I recieved the book, and decided to start it on a Friday so I could have the weekend to read it. I opened it up, and found myself completely wrapped up in the story. By the third chapter, I was already anxious for the ending. I enjoyed every word I read. It is true that the story line is completely different from the movie's plot, but it is still a good book. Do not read it expecting to read the script. That is not what this book is. It is its own Roger Rabbit story. It is true that ther are SOME similarities between the movie and the book (i.e. characters, some lines, actions, etc.) but overall there is basically nothing that is the same.

The writing style was done very well. The author makes the main characters very round, and established specific personalities for them. Aside from the main characters, he also spend time developing the minor characters throughout the story. He works them into the plot, and gives them important roles. He uses some patterns throughout the book that help keep the story going. The images, wording, and overall tone that is used throughout the book can all be used to affect the reader's senses. The book is written in first person, which makes you feel like you are seeing through the eyes of the narrator. It makes the story personal and real. It was an easy book to read with simple writing. This book is good for light reading.

The only con I have against the book is the ending. It is definatly not what I expected, and I am still not sure how I feel about it. I cannot decide if I liked it, or if I just settled with it because the rest of the book was so good. The story keeps building up and then all of a sudden it is resolved. There is no transition into the climax of the plot. It just happens. The ending of the story is the only con to me. That is why this is a 4 star review instead of a 5. But that is only my opinion.

I was pleasantly surprised to find this book for my Kindle as I've been curious to read it since I learned of its existence, but while I enjoyed it, I can see why it has remained out of print even though it inspired a well-known movie - it's not for the same audience as the movie. The audience for the movie were probably similar to the Pixar crowd nowadays - in search of enough movement and colour to keep very young kids interested yet also requiring enough subtlety and sophistication to engage the parents. But it's hard to say who Gary Wolf was writing for - fans of hard boiled crime fiction who also have the ability to completely suspend their disbelief? I say "completely" because even when you accept a world where comic strip characters are real, talk in speech balloons, and are photographed to create comics, it does not really prepare you for the plot device used to resolve the mystery - it's one of those endings that leaves you feeling the story did not play by its own rules. It's possible the unlikely plot twists and strained metaphors ("I sank a well into my bottom drawer, and struck more bourbon") are deliberately over the top for the sake of humour, but whether the joke holds up for the length of a short novel depends on your taste.

Even so, I give it a high rating because I did enjoy its uncompromisingly darker tone. No "dip" is required to dispatch toons; they get shot dead and bleed. In this version of the story Jessica Rabbit really is "bad", not just "drawn that way" and unlike in the movie there is no need to mess around with freeze frame to see her without her underwear. While Roger himself has some of the same overly helpful, goofy nature that was a big part of his personality in the movie, he also manages to solve elements of the case on his own, makes allusions to Socrates, solves chess problems and like all the other characters in the book, seems to be hiding something.

I've read about on-again, off-again plans for a sequel to the movie, and given the current trend towards going back to the roots of a series and creating reboots and re imaginings rather than straight sequels, it would be very interesting to see someone forget trying to compete with the latest Disney/Pixar masterpiece and create a mature audience Roger Rabbit that stayed closer to the book, maybe with a better ending but still aiming for a niche market of adults who grew up with Roger and are ready for a darker, more complex story.

One can dream.

This book is a personal favorite of mine. Jessica is a shrewish, upwardly mobile ex-porn actress. There's no Judge Doom. Roger seems to be as frivolous as his movie counterpart, but is just as scheming.

The fact is, no one at Disney wanted to see Roger killed - and he is in the film - and the ending is poignant, if sad - the last lines spoken by a character telling Eddie that he's a stand-up guy will bring a tear to your eye.

If you like old-time potboilers with a twist, check this book out.

This book is not its film which the film inspired, but it is a delight of its own. Don't put it down after the first few pages, it starts slow, but emerges great fun! The author kept the surprises coming, I never knew what to expect.

I've read several Gary Wolf books, and this one tops them all! He brings new meaning to the term "a page turner". It is wonderful. Don't be surpised if you read it, to find that it is absoloutly nothing like it's movie counterpart "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Rabbit is the star of a newspaper cartoon strip, who is in the midst of a divorce between his beloved Jessica. He hires Eddy Valiant to investigate why his producers(?) won't let him transfer to another strip. Before Eddy find out, though, Roger get's murdred in his own home. As does one of the producers(?) the very same night. This is when it get's relly interesting, so I'm just going to leave you in suspense. (hee-hee) REad this book! END

I enjoyed the book. It was easy reading and much better than the movie. An older book and worth reading again.

I've always liked the movie the story in the book isn't much like the movie story - it's better. Besides the character names not much is the same. its both funny and a pretty good mystery story. I'm going the buy the next book right now.