Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000)

The Long Review:

Sometimes, you just want to see Hollywood actors have fun, or make fun of themselves. This could be the main reason why you'd want to see The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This, or Piper Perabo.

This comedy/fantasy directed by Des McAnuff has Fearless Leader (Robert de Niro), Boris (Jason Alexander), and Natasha (Rene Russo) hatching an evil plan to take over the world. Here's the deal. Fearless Leader sets up his own TV network, RBTV (Really Bad TV) and through its broadcast, will hypnotize the whole world to follow his bidding. To stop him and his nitwit duo, the FBI sends agent Karen Sympathy (Piper Perabo) to take Rocky and Bullwinkle away from reruns and into the real world. They figured these two are the most qualified to do the job, seeing as their resumes outline extensive experience of outwitting Fearless Leader's team.

And so the movie goes. Half of the real perks come from watching De Niro, Alexander, and Russo have fun. It was like watching grown kids at play. And they played their parts well. It's one of those things where you can tell that what they're doing isn't really work to them. It's plain fun. So you can say that their performances had heart. Sigh. The other half of the perks come from watching Piper Perabo. She was just so cute and adorable and convincing. Oh, and so were Rocky and Bullwinkle. Yeah. Oh, the narration was good, too. Come to think of it, most of our few chuckles were triggered by the narrator's dry humour. He was cool.

As for the plot, well, it's simple, predictable…you know. We were bored. We're sure other people, especially the kids, found this movie simply fantastic. Like we said, we're not really into that stuff. And since we were bored, the movie seemed to drag on.

This film is meant to take you back to your childhood (given that you did watch Rocky and Bullwinkle as a kid) and remind you of your innocence and make you all warm and fuzzy inside. Unfortunately, all this was lost on us because neither of us was alive while the series was on the air. But we got what we came to see. Piper at her cutest.

Ebert's satisfaction:

ebert says	moviegurus say
Now comes the movie version of the TV show (which was canceled in 1964), and it has the same mixture of dumb puns, corny sight gags and sly, even sophisticated in-jokes. It's a lot of fun.	We're glad you had fun with all these things, Ebert. Sigh. We didn't.
As much fun as the wit is the film's overall sense of well-being; this is a happy movie and not the desperate sort of scratching for laughs we got in a cartoon retread like "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas."	True enough. This film's an innocent effort at entertaining. We're just a tougher audience.
Russo makes a persuasive Natasha, all red lipstick, seductive accent and power high heels, and De Niro's patent leather hair and little round glasses will remind movie buffs of Donald Pleasance.	We agree. These two looked very convincing. And it looked like they were having lotsa fun.
But the real discovery of the movie is its (human) lead, a 23-year-old newcomer named Piper Perabo, who plays an FBI agent. She has fine comic timing and is so fetching, she sort of stops the clock.	Yup, Piper's the real star of the show. Go, Piper…Go, Piper! Is that why the movie seemed to drag on? 'Cuz Piper stopped the clock? Naughty Piper.