Scene 1 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit

I’m gonna start this project with a scene that I was obsessed with as a kid. I mean, I watched this one scene so many times that it was worn out on my VHS copy. My two all-time favorite cartoon characters are Donald Duck and Daffy Duck, and they have been for as long as I can remember. Children don’t typically have a frame of reference for things like copyright law, but I was well aware that the two of them belonged to different companies, that they were positioned as rival characters and that their one scene together in “Roger Rabbit” was something truly special.



There’s a lot going on in this scene. We’re first introduced to Marvin Acme, the man whose murder really gets the plot moving. We have some nifty little jokes (I still say “and I mean ice” whenever I order a drink on the rocks). We get Betty Boop’s heartbreaking cameo, a starlet of black and white cartoons reduced to nightclub cigarette girl. After all, “work’s been kinda slow since cartoons went to color.”

Sidenote, I read once that the script specified that cameo as being Felix the Cat, who found himself out of work once sound was introduced. I think it works much better with Betty, though.

Throughout all of this, almost in the background, are Donald and Daffy trying to get through a rendition of Hungarian Rhapsody without killing each other. The way their personalities bounce off each other is almost magical. The easily irritable Donald is a perfect foil for the early, screwball Daffy and both characters are in top form here. The insults, the catchphrases, the manic way they keep slamming each other into the pianos, it all works.

I’m particularly fond of how it ends. While Donald gets the last shot in with his cannon, there’s really no winner. They both get dragged off stage. I especially love the implication that they do this every night but they can never get through the whole act.

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit” is a wet dream of a movie for golden age animation enthusiasts. Sure, there’s a few absent characters like Popeye, Tom and Jerry or the aforementioned Felix, but this is still a deftly handled mashup of the era’s most beloved characters. People tend to forget this scene, my favorite, because it’s usually overshadowed by what immediately follows: the introduction of Jessica Rabbit.

As for me, though, the movie works best as the ultimate Disney/Warner Bros. crossover, personified here by the Ducks.