Death to Smoochy Review (2002) (Throwback Thursday #12)
Director: Danny DeVito
Writers: Adam Resnick
Starring: Robin Williams, Edward Norton, Catherine Keener, Danny DeVito, Jon Stewart
Release Date: March 29, 2002
There are movies that I would probably rank higher than Death to Smoochy if we were sitting down and making some serious list of the greatest movies ever made, and there are certainly comedies that have received more acclaim, made more money, won more awards, and appear on far more “greatest comedies of all time” lists, but if you ask me what my favorite comedy ever made is, I don’t really have to think about it. It’s Death to Smoochy, it has been for years, and at this point I don’t see anything knocking Rainbow Randolph and a giant fuchsia rhino off the top of that particular mountain. And damn, that opening sentence was almost a paragraph long itself. A better writer would probably edit it, but that’s just how I roll.
Released in 2002 and directed by Danny DeVito, Death to Smoochy is one of those movies that almost seems impossible to make today: a pitch-black and incredibly obscene comedy set in the world of children’s television, where practically everyone is corrupt, somebody is always trying to screw somebody else over, organized crime is involved, people get murdered, and all of this is happening against a backdrop of rainbows, singing animals, smiling children, and cheerful songs about eating healthy food. It’s completely ridiculous, often wildly inappropriate, occasionally surprisingly sweet, and somehow all of those things fit together into one of the funniest movies I’ve ever watched.
Robin Williams stars as Rainbow Randolph, the enormously popular host of a children’s television show who gets busted accepting bribes from parents trying to get their kids onto the program. KidNet immediately dumps him, his career disappears almost overnight, and the network goes searching for somebody so squeaky clean that there is absolutely no chance of another scandal. Unfortunately for Randolph, they find exactly that person in Sheldon Mopes, played by Edward Norton, a relentlessly optimistic children’s entertainer who performs as Smoochy the Rhino and actually believes that, “You can’t change the world, but you can make a dent.”
What a putz.
Sheldon is almost painfully wholesome; he cares about healthy food, doesn’t want to exploit children, doesn’t want his character plastered across a bunch of cheap merchandise, and actually believes children’s television can be used to do something positive. Naturally, everyone around him takes one look at that innocence and immediately starts trying to figure out how much money they can make off of him. Smoochy’s Magic Jungle becomes a massive success, Smoochy turns into a national phenomenon, KidNet has found its new golden goose, and Rainbow Randolph completely loses his damn mind.
That is where Robin Williams takes over the movie, because Randolph doesn’t simply resent the guy who replaced him, he becomes absolutely consumed with destroying him. Williams made plenty of family-friendly movies during his career, so I think it’s easy to forget just how completely unhinged and filthy he could be when somebody let him loose, and Danny DeVito apparently decided the best way to direct him here was to remove whatever leash may have existed, throw it in the garbage, and see what happened. The result is Rainbow Randolph becoming increasingly furious, desperate, pathetic, and insane as every attempt to reclaim his old life somehow makes things even worse.
Randolph’s schemes start out crazy and just keep getting crazier, including tricking Sheldon into appearing at what he believes is a legitimate charity event, only for the poor bastard to discover far too late that he has walked into a Nazi rally. Needless to say, photographs of a giant pink rhinoceros standing beneath a swastika aren’t exactly the kind of publicity a children’s television star is looking for, but that’s Death to Smoochy, a movie that somehow goes from Nazis to organized crime, assassination attempts, children’s charities, romance, murder, and songs about vegetables without ever stopping to wonder whether any of this should be happening in the same story.
Of course, there is one scene that immediately comes to mind whenever I think about Death to Smoochy, and anybody who has seen the movie probably already knows exactly where I’m going with this. Randolph manages to sabotage a batch of cookies being used on Smoochy’s show, and when the cookie is revealed during the children’s television show, it’s something considerably less appropriate than everyone expected. There is no point pretending this is sophisticated comedy; it is a giant dick cookie, and more than twenty years after I first saw the movie, I still laugh my ass off every time.
What makes the scene so damn funny isn’t simply the cookie, though; it’s what happens when Sheldon desperately tries to save the situation by telling everyone that it’s a rocket ship. Rainbow, who is watching from the rafters, can’t take it anymore; he storms onto the set, grabs the thing, and proceeds to explain in increasingly obscene detail, in front of an entire studio full of children, that what they’re looking at most certainly isn’t a rocket ship. Robin Williams completely unloads, rattling off one ridiculous name for a penis after another while security tries to drag him away, eventually screaming that Sheldon made the thing “straight from dill dough,” and then, just before taking a tumble down the stairs, reminding the guards, “I’m Rainbow fucking Randolph, I know the way out.”
Meanwhile, the kids are laughing their asses off through the whole thing, which somehow makes an already hilarious scene even better. All of the adults are treating this like an absolute disaster, Sheldon is desperately trying to keep his children’s show from going completely off the rails, Rainbow is standing there screaming about cocks, balls, stiffies and the “one-eyed wonder weasel,” and the children think this is the greatest episode of Smoochy’s Magic Jungle they’ve ever seen. Of course they do, they’re kids, somebody just made a giant dick out of cookies, and the crazy rainbow guy is losing his mind over it. Honestly, Rainbow may have accidentally stumbled onto the highest-rated children’s television format of all time.
That entire sequence might be my favorite Robin Williams comedy scene, because it is Williams at his most gloriously unhinged, with Randolph having spent the movie watching Smoochy take his show, his audience, his career, and basically his entire life, only to finally stand backstage and watch the guy call a dick-shaped cookie a rocket ship. That’s apparently the line Rainbow Randolph cannot allow society to cross. He may have lost everything; he may be completely insane by this point, but goddammit, he’s not going to stand there and let Sheldon Mopes lie to those children about basic anatomy.
As great as Williams is, Edward Norton deserves just as much credit for making the whole thing work because Sheldon could have easily become the least interesting character in his own movie. Norton instead plays him completely straight; there isn’t some big reveal where we discover Sheldon is secretly just as corrupt as everybody else, and he really is that guy. He genuinely believes the things he tells the kids, he really does want to make children’s television better, and he really doesn’t want to sell garbage to children just because somebody can make a few dollars from it. In a movie populated almost entirely by people looking for their next payday, Sheldon wandering through all of this insanity in a giant rhino costume and trying to maintain his principles gives the movie a strangely sweet center underneath all the profanity and darkness.
Catherine Keener is great as KidNet executive Nora Wells, who initially can’t stand Sheldon’s relentless wholesomeness before eventually falling for him, while Danny DeVito pulls double duty behind the camera and in front of it as Sheldon’s agent, Burke Bennett. Jon Stewart plays KidNet executive Marion Frank Stokes, Pam Ferris is Tommy Cotter, Michael Rispoli is Spinner Dunn, better known as Moochy, Harvey Fierstein plays Merv Green, and the late Vincent Schiavelli rounds things out as Buggy Ding Dong, which is still one of those character names that makes me laugh before the guy even does anything.
The supporting cast is a big reason the movie becomes so much more than simply “Robin Williams tries to kill Barney,” because DeVito creates this entire sleazy little criminal ecosystem surrounding children’s entertainment. You’ve got network executives, agents, crooked charities, mobsters, and washed-up children’s performers all fighting over money and control while Sheldon is standing in the middle of it dressed like a giant fuchsia rhinoceros, singing songs about friendship and healthy eating. The contrast between what this world looks like on television and what is happening behind the curtain is basically the entire joke, and the further DeVito pushes it, the funnier it gets.
There is also something underneath all of the insanity that I appreciate more now than I probably did when I first watched the movie, because Death to Smoochy is actually a pretty damn good satire of what happens when something created for children becomes valuable enough for adults to start fighting over it. Everybody wants something from Smoochy: the network wants ratings, executives want money, agents want money, charities want money, the mob wants its cut, and everybody sees this goofy pink rhino as something that can be packaged, sold, and exploited. Sheldon is the only guy in the room who actually seems concerned about the kids watching the show, which makes it even funnier when everyone else treats him like he’s the crazy one. All Sheldon wants to do is sing songs, encourage kids to eat their vegetables, and maybe make the world slightly better than he found it; meanwhile, people around him are plotting murder.
I’ve watched Death to Smoochy more times than I could possibly count at this point, and it’s one of those rare comedies where knowing every joke doesn’t hurt it. I know the cookies are coming, I know the Nazi rally is coming, I know Randolph is going to become increasingly unhinged, and there are scenes where I practically know the dialogue before the characters say it, but I still laugh anyway. That’s probably the best compliment I can give a comedy after more than twenty years, because plenty of movies have made me laugh once; far fewer can keep doing it when I’ve seen them enough times that there shouldn’t be any surprises left.
And, of course, this is Throwback Thursday, so the question eventually becomes whether this movie still deserves a place on the shelf. In this case, that’s not much of a question. Death to Smoochy isn’t something I’m hanging onto simply because of nostalgia, and it isn’t one of those movies where I loved it twenty years ago and have to make excuses for it now. I think the damn thing is every bit as funny today as I did back then. If anything, I probably appreciate it more now because I can see the satire underneath all the insanity while still being immature enough to laugh uncontrollably when Robin Williams starts screaming about a giant cookie dick.
So yes, obviously KEEP IT, put it on the shelf and keep it there, preferably in a physical format that doesn’t disappear because some streaming contract expired. This is my favorite comedy ever made, and if I’m flipping through the collection looking for something guaranteed to make me laugh, Rainbow Randolph and Smoochy are always going to be waiting.
Death to Smoochy bombed at the box office, critics absolutely hated it, and more than two decades later it still isn’t likely to show up on many lists of the greatest comedies ever made, but what the hell do they know? This movie is hilarious; it’s awesome, and after all these years it remains my favorite comedy of all time.
If you love Death to Smoochy, congratulations, you are certainly my kind of person. If you don’t like it, well, you probably thought that cookie was a rocket ship.
Death to Smoochy gets a five out of five: EXALTED.
If you enjoyed this one, there are plenty more old favorites, forgotten gems, childhood classics, and the occasional movie I probably have no business defending in the Throwback Thursday archives. You might like my review of Maverick or perhaps Deathstalker.
Love Death to Smoochy too, think I’m completely insane for calling it my favorite comedy ever, or still convinced that cookie was a rocket ship? Say so in the comments.
