*** of ****
Rated: R
Length: ~110 minutes
Writer: Danny DeVito
Director: Adam Resnick
Cast:
Robin Williams: Rainbow Randolph Smiley
Edward Norton: Smoochy (Sheldon Mopes)
Danny DeVito: Burke
Jon Stewart: M. Frank Stokes
Catherine Keener: Nora Wells

Synopsis:
Rainbow Randolph looses his popular kids show when he gets caught taking bribes from parents to put their kids on the show. The jaded network replaces him with a squeaky clean guy who plays a fuchsia rhino named Smoochy. Cleanliness conflicts with the extensive filth of television.

Review:
The audience liked it more and more as it picked up speed, got funnier, and progressed into the bizarrely realistic. The staging and early camera tricks helped to take this out of the real world, and allowed for more extreme in the darkness of the humor which in turn allowed a more scathing representation of the real world. The juxtaposition of good guy and bad guy elements for some characters only serves a plot devices, but for the more central others, it adds some depth to the fundamentally conflicted nature of children and big business. They tried to show the merchandising of show related products as grossly excessive, but compared to the real world the movie was actually tame. I would rather have my kids listen to Smoochy songs than a lot of the crap that's out there!

Danny DeVito directed a steady pace that developed smoothly and kept the audience on top of the events in the story. DeVito's acting was his usual. Jon Stewart did well as the slime ball executive. Of course being in real world TV show host position would give him plenty of examples to emulate. Catherine Keener has a conflicted character that couldn't be fully developed in the framework of this movie, but she does well at her role. The slow development of her character actually improves the plot. Edward Norton's performance was very good as he pulled of a good guy that's overly good while still being a real human. Robin Williams' lines are overloaded with swears to induce shock value much of the time to cover the basic lack of anything much being said, but some lines do have very sharp teeth. His over the top delivery is good for this role, and it does provide him an opportunity to play a lunatic bad guy with just enough grounding to recognize goodness in the smallest of actions.

The surrealistic setting is built from the start, and well accented at the end. This is worth seeing, but go in knowing that it has many crude dark facets.