Movie Time Capsule Blog #11: "The Adventures of the American Rabbit"

Americans like to mention that the world has really changed a lot since September 11, 2001. It is often said in hushed tones and muted sighs indicative of wishes to go back to a simpler time. When people wistfully talk about a “simpler time,” they are often talking about any date prior to and including September 10^th, while glossing over the fact that American history is already soaked in enough blood as it is. Besides, who is to say what generation had a simpler go of things to begin with?

Without getting into a long political diatribe or delving deeper into past U.S. foreign policies, I feel it necessary to note that people most affected by unrest in the United States’ affairs are comprised of an entire generation of people who have never really lived through a war or a time of massive upheaval. It has been a rather general observation on my part that people who lived through Vietnam era didn’t take modern threats as personally as younger generations did.

Considering the U.S. was involved in an extended cold war with the Soviet Union, the 1980s weren’t that bad in terms of violent conflict directly involving U.S. troop movements or massive shows of force and general dick swinging. An entire generation, myself included, were born into a world where we were seemingly sheltered from war. Even the first Gulf War was a bit of an anticlimactic farce. No one really felt threatened as a child and we were too young to understand what an arms race was. There was no Department of Homeland Security and you could get on a plane without eight forms of identification or a full body cavity search. Hell, the internet didn’t even exist and 24-hour news channels were still in their infancy; the talking heads were still in their cabbage patches just lying in wait to cram the horrible truth of the world down our throats with an unhealthy dose of fear on the side.

But despite the relative innocence of the 1980s, you don’t have to look very far to see that the militant attitude of the United States really hasn’t changed over the years. I enter into evidence today’s time capsule entry: 1986’s “The Adventures of the American Rabbit.” This film may very well have inspired the entire presidency of George W. Bush.

Since the political subtext of the movie (I hesitate to call it a film and even dubbing it a movie feels dubious) is as far from subtle as you can get, I will try my best to just stick to the movie itself before this becomes a hundred page treatise on symbolism and conditioning. Even if you took out its right wing leanings it still might be the most ignorant children’s film ever made

“American Rabbit” opens with a bunch of adult rabbits fawning over a newborn bunny. Right away I know I am in for a long 80 minutes. The movie starts so abruptly that I felt I joined it already in progress; like its very presence was interrupting my day. The adults are doting on Robert Rabbit who astoundingly is the only child in a family of rabbits. His father has a terrible moustache and only owns one tie, while his mother constantly wears an apron not only to remind everyone through gender stereotyping what her role in the family is but because the hand drawn Korean animation is so shoddy you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Some really creepy old rabbit seems to have taken a shine to Rob. He remains nameless but is always there to talk to Rob’s parents and neighbours while stroking his chin and saying how gifted he thinks Rob is. At a soccer game when Rob is very young, his father tells the old rabbit his son is an amazing team-mate, but also has “the fighting will to win at any cost.” Also, Rob’s musical abilities are somehow important to the old guy’s plans despite Rob clearly not knowing any songs that haven’t lapsed into public domain.

One day while Rob (who has a voice like Michael J. Fox, but is really just the guy who provided the voice for Donatello of the Ninja Turtles) and his parents are out for a picnic, a boulder threatens to crush... something... and Rob turns into a living American flag with roller skates for feet by running really fast.

No one can figure out what just happened except for the creepy old rabbit who apparently is now a creepy old wizard. He probably pushed that boulder to make his sick point: that Rob is the carrier of “the legacy.” Apparently the rabbit village has bred a special kind of freedom fighter since “before the beginning of time.” Rob and his father trust the creepy wizard implicitly while the mother cries her eyes out. Rob realizes he must suddenly go off on his own to help save the world without questioning any of this or why he should even be compelled to care in the first place. The old rabbit doesn’t follow. It is also the last time Rob’s parents are seen or even mentioned.

Rob eventually walks to the woods just outside San Francisco (?!?) and is immediately harassed by a biker gang made up of jackals (who really look like wolves) and vultures. They are so subtly attired that they ever wear Nazi looking helmets, er, kettles that they use to make rabbit stew.

Almost as soon as he arrives in the big city, Rob lands a job playing piano for *ahem* THE WHITE BROTHERS BAND at a nightclub called the Pandamonium. Rob works for Teddy the Panda (the owner who sounds and even eerily looks like James Spader) and the club’s booker Bunny, an overly sexualised female rabbit who says phrases just as generic and inane as her name. She compliments Rob at his audition by telling him he plays “a whole lot of piano.” Also, Teddy describes Pandamonium as a rock club, but all the songs the house band play are old public domain jazz standards that are easily identifiable to anyone who has taken music appreciation.

During Rob’s first gig with the band, the jackals tear the club up while Rob keeps playing like he’s fucking Jeff Healey in “Road House.” The band still plays even after the jackals leave amidst the rubble of the club. When they finally stop playing, the rest of the people in the club have all but resigned themselves to the torments and tyranny presented by the jackals. Rob and Bunny decide to rock the complacency of the sleepy little city to its core by staging a march against the jackals.

The jackals run their operations out of the side of a mountain and their leader is a glowing pair of sunglasses wedged between a fedora and a mob boss’ suit with a vaguely European accent that comes and goes throughout the movie. Sunglasses McGiovaniwicz orders his gang to follow the march.

As the march winds its way through the villages of San Francisco that never existed in the first place, the marchers eventually make their way to the Golden Gate Bridge. One of the vultures is actually able to sever one of the massive cables on the bridge with its beak and manages to put everyone in danger. Rob disappears. The Captain America rip-off appears. The day is saved. Rob reappears and the march continues like they literally all just didn’t almost die.

The march ends at an exact replica of the Esplanade in Boston and geography is officially out the window. I would have thought the animals lived in some sort of amalgamation of cities like in “Babe: Pig in the City”, but Ping Pong, the gorilla with the miscast voice of Garfield, specifically said they were in San Francisco only moments prior (up until that point it was simply implied). While there, Teddy addresses the marchers with a rousing speech:

“You know my place, The Pandamonium? Well, it’s a total loss. They creamed it. I got to admit that at first I thought I would just pull out, but I’m not gonna’ do that. That’s exactly what the jackals want!”

Teddy decides to take the band on a “whirlwind” tour that consists of exactly two locations, the Grand Canyon and New Orleans, in order to raise money to help rebuild the club.

The jackals decide to try and convince Ping Pong, who is suddenly one of the main characters, to do away with the American Rabbit. When Ping refuses, the jackals drug him with a syringe and kidnap him. When the band arrives at the abandoned rail yard (?!?) where they were supposed to meet Ping, all they find are some syringes. Rob is the only one suspicious, presumably because the others all know from being in bands that the rail yard is the perfect place to main-line black tar heroin.

The band’s gig at The Trap Door, “the Grand Canyon’s hottest new nightclub”, turns out to be a trap set by the jackals. No shit. That’s like trying to convince the freshmen that there is a bowling alley and a swimming pool on a floor of the high school that doesn’t even exist. Rob saves everyone’s life, finds Ping before he is drowned in a torture chamber, and they make their way to New Orleans.

When they arrive in New Orleans the following day “Day After Tomorrow” style, it looks as if Hurricane Katrina came 20 years earlier; buildings are dilapidated and boarded up, people are homeless everywhere you look, looting occurs at an astounding rate, drunken frat boys fall down in the street. New Orleans is so shitty that I bet if “Girls Gone Wild” had been shat out of Joe Francis’ asshole of a mind in the 80s, this movie would have tried to incorporate it as well. Even the club the band was supposed to play had been burned to the ground earlier in the day... by the jackals... who beat them there... from the Grand Canyon.

After they think they have disposed of the heroes in a failed bombing of a riverboat, the jackals decide to head to New York City, where they “will rule with an iron will!” Rob figures out these plans while attempting to conceal his identity and convinces the band, who no longer have equipment, to go to New York.

The band hitches a ride with a father and son pair of moose who are hauling a load of chocolate they have made to NYC. They are the chocolate moose. The movie doesn’t let us forget that. Immediately upon their arrival the moose are kidnapped by the jackals and the band quietly escapes without offering any resistance.

Teddy takes a meeting with some corporate penguins in hopes that they will help fund the effort to rebuild the club or at least get instruments for the musicians. The penguins attempt to put Teddy through a bureaucratic nightmare and he leaves slightly frustrated. Nanoseconds after Teddy leaves, the corporate penguins RENT OUT the Statue of Liberty to the jackals who can pay cash.

The chocolate moose have been kidnapped as a part of the crime syndicate’s great plan to rule through fear. The jackals have created a “doomsday switch” that Rob feels he is powerless to stop. Rob begrudgingly agrees to read the jackals’ manifesto while flying around the Statue of Liberty (which is still human in an all animal world): resist and get blown up or submit and get chocolate. The moose have been kidnapped to produce the chocolate because “he who controls the chocolate controls everything.” This much is true. The Spanish knew this for hundreds of years.

Rob is dismayed by the New World Order he feels he helped to create. The jackals stage shakedowns for protection money and even issue I.D. CARDS. The city begins to quietly rise up against their oppressors, but they still need Rob’s help to disable the “Doomsday Switch.”

After a brief meeting with the creepy old wizard rabbit in the back of a cab, Rob decides to fly off to Niagara Falls to shut off the falls and thusly cut off all the power to New York City.

This is funny for me on numerous levels:

1. All of the characters are able to make it to Niagara Falls from New York City in a matter of seconds without super powers. New York City to Niagara Falls is an eight hour drive if you are speeding. I used to live in Niagara Falls, New York and I doubt I would have been as chronically bored if New York City was right next door. All we had was fucking Buffalo, New York and St. Catherines, Ontario, neither of which ever inspired much travelling.
2. The falls supplies less than one percent of New York City’s energy.
3. I had a friend who was so dimwitted that he actually thought the Falls could be shut off. I am convinced he saw this movie as a child and believed it.

In the end, America wins. It’s fucking awesome. When we just band together we can take on all comers. You want some jackals? Well, come get some! Fuck yeah! Now I must go do my part to keep the legacy going.

Verdict: Yvan Eht Nioj!