So how bad is this Anglo-American farce-flop, which helped sink FilmFour? Not that bad. Danny DeVito helms it as a black comedy in dayglo disguise, in which the disgraced, corrupt TV kiddie-show host Rainbow Randolph (Robin Williams) wages deranged war on his replacement, the squeaky-clean, liquid-alfalfa-popping Smoochy the Rhino (Ed Norton). Then the Mob wants in...
Sure, it's slight, silly and overlong - and Williams is a charm-drain. But Norton and Catherine Keener ("I was a kiddie-host groupie!") are great and it's hard not to like a film in which a pink rhino leads the singalong: "Oh, we'll get you off that smack, oh yes we will..."
DVD Extras:
A frenetic, seven-minute-long Making Of, interviews, some wisely deleted scenes and a thin commentary larynxed by DeVito and DoP Anastas N Michos. Thanks for all the talk about the lighting set-ups, guys...
