The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle

A chore from start to finish, this belabored adaptation of the classic cartoon is, if possible, even worse than Titan A.E. Desperately straining to appear in-jokey and hip while being sure not to make any jokes that might go over the head of the average 13-year-old, R&B is more like Airplane! than Jay Ward and Bill Scott’s anarchic cartoons. (When the President assembles his war council, they’re named General Foods, General Store and General Admission.) As Fearless Leader, Robert De Niro (whose company produced the picture) is antic without being even slightly funny, and Piper Perabo’s jittery turn as a teenaged FBI agent (a horrid attempt to snare the "youth market," and perhaps to cadge publicity off Jerry Bruckheimer’s Coyote Ugly, in which Perabo stars) is nails-on-blackboard annoying; she looks like a refugee from a summer theater workshop. TV series veteran June Foray returns as the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel, and Jason Alexander does manage some successful mugging as Boris Badenov (Rene Russo’s Natasha merely looks thin), but overall the film reeks of try-anything panic, stuffed with fourth-wall gags, puns and references to puns and a parade of cameos: Janeane Garofalo, Whoopi Goldberg, John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Jonathan Winters (thrice), Don Novello, even the stars of Nickelodeon’s Good Burger, all as if in the hopes that someone, somewhere, might like something.

—Sam Adams