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DEATH TO SMOOCHY Send This Review to a Friend
Before this Danny DeVito-directed malevolent look at commercialism in children's television surrenders to huffing and puffing plotitis there are some funny ideas and gags milked by stars Robin Williams, Edward Norton and Catherine Keener. But what would work better as a less shrill comedy turns into an hysterical big production that crushes whatever clever bits there are. "Death to Smoochy" is murdered by overkill.
It's problematical just who might go for this mess. The comedy isn't witty enough for grownups and it's too profane and mean for youngsters.
Robin Williams plays Randolph Smiley, a superstar of kiddie programming, but he's busted for the bribes he takes from parents to put their little darlings on his popular show. The production numbers spoof the type of material we see on TV geared to children, even to the point of having a chorus of dancing dwarfs mingling with the youngsters, and Williams makes Smiley thoroughly over the top as he cavorts in front of the camera. When he's fired, Keener as Nora, a senior programming executive, is sent out to recruit Norton as Sheldon Mopes, who is at the low end of the talent pool but is known to be ethical and squeaky clean. Too ethical, as it turns out, for he doesn't believe in exploiting children by using them to sell products. He naively thinks television for the young should be uplifting.
Mopes's shtick is entertaining as Smoochy, the Rhino, with costume to match. He becomes an immediate TV success. Enter Danny DeVito as a corrupt agent in cahoots with those who would undermine Mopes's ethics in favor of rampant commercial exploitation. Meanwhile, Smiley plots against Mopes in hope of getting his show back. A romance develops between Mopes and Nora even though she hates him at first.
On the plus side, and you have to look hard to find it, Norton, Keener and DeVito are good at what they do, and Williams gets off some funny, vulgar cracks now and then. But the film, written by Adam Resnick, grows more and more hectic, and watching it is like having someone try to entertain you while you are being beaten over the head with a sledgehammer. A Warner Brothers release.
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