Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

A murder investigation with as many suspects as there are witnesses. A femme fatale with icewater in her veins and sex appeal that she knows exactly how to use. A down-on-his-luck private investigator trying to make good on a promise to a client. In a lot of ways Who Censored Roger Rabbit seems like an assortment of cliches of the hardboiled detective genre, and then you pause for a second and realize that one of the main characters is a 6 foot tall bunny rabbit. It doesn't feel exactly like satire or parody, but more like an absurdist, screwball take on an old genre.

You might be thinking that you're familiar with Roger Rabbit, because you've seen the Disney film. The two are absolutely nothing alike - the character share the same name but the characterization is completely different, the plot's completely unrelated, and the tone and style is completely different as well. It's almost baffling how completely different they are from each other; I like each for what they are, but don't go into this thinking you're getting anything like the film.

One of the biggest differences, and one that I found most entertaining, was the character of Roger. Sounding like Annie Hall-era Woody Allen, Roger's a neurotic mess, and his play and banter off of Eddie Valiant's hardboiled straight man is good for a lot of laughs throughout the book.

Really strange to listen to the voices the narrator chooses for Roger and Eddie after growing up with the movie. I really like this as an alternate universe look at these characters (apparently this one gets retconned in the next book), and it was an enjoyable quirky noir that was maybe too predictable.

All right, I went into this very hesitant, because Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is easily a top tier movie for me. It's rare but not unheard of for me to like a movie better than its source material, so I was wary! But honestly, this was so far removed from the movie that it was easy to separate the two in my mind. I mean, it has the familiar characters: Roger, of course, and Eddie; Roger's beloved wife, Jessica, and Baby Herman are all present, but there's no Judge Doom (the most terrifying movie villain of all time tbh) and it doesn't appear to be set in the past. There are a multitude of differences like this, and it took a little bit of adjustment (especially concerning the visualization of Toons having actual speech bubbles that accompany them talking, which was kind of cool) but I ended up really digging it. I had some issues, but honestly it was a good time! I still prefer silly movie Roger over sadsack Roger in the book, but both have merits, and like I said: these are two pretty distinct works. 3.5 hardboiled detectives working with cartoon rabbits out of 5.