"Is that a rabbit in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?"

My utterly sensible parents warned me off Who Framed Roger Rabbit for a long time - they thought it was ridiculous, confusing and stupid. Once I reached the age where I realised my parents are usually wrong about this sort of thing (and also that I like the ridiculous and stupid) I tried it for myself. And...I absolutely loved it.

It tells the story of Roger Rabbit who, worried his wife is cheated on him, has his studio send Eddie Valiant - a private detective - to snoop on her. But when the man she was supposedly cheating with (Marvin Acme himself) ends up dead, Roger Rabbit is chief suspect and has to team up with Eddie to clear his name and uncover the truth behind the mystery. It's part film noir and part zany cartoon and although it at first seems that these two genres should never be paired together, it works amazingly well.

And I think one of the reasons it works so perfectly - aside from the usual great casting and sharp, witty, creative script - is that it is so comfortably familiar. It's filled with a host of characters we recognise such as Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck, yet taken outside where we are used to seeing them and placed in a new environment together, which is just so excitingly cool. The film also reverses roles and truly mixes up the world of toon and human, and not only visually. It often cleverly plays on stereotypes and familiar features of cartoons, such as the Tom and Jerry like injuries and accidents that befall cartoon characters, the unbelievable laws of Physics and (most obviously) the gadgets that come from ACME, but these affect the human characters too. And I don't think I need to go into how the toons are not mere 2D characters but are well rounded and play brilliantly off each other and the actors.

To sum up, it's a beyond entertaining film, truly clever and really interesting as well. A true classic.

"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."

Oh, and film news. Awards season is coming up: Golden Globe nominations and SAG award nominations have been announced and I must say they look far more interesting than last year when I was completely apathetic to almost everything. Very excited to see a lot of these (although it does look like the HFPA has made the usual cock-ups in terms of comedy films. I love Johnny Depp. But The Tourist? No.)