In defence of Death to Smoochy – the most absurd kids’ TV satire ever made

Once a film has been crit­i­cal­ly tar­nished, it’s hard to come back from that. As soon as the neg­a­tive reviews start to drop, pub­lic per­cep­tions are formed and the box office is often affect­ed accord­ing­ly. Yet it’s fair­ly com­mon for a film to be met with crit­i­cal apa­thy upon its ini­tial release, only to assume the man­tle of over­looked gem lat­er on. Four­teen years after its dis­ap­point­ing the­atri­cal run in 2002, Dan­ny DeVito’s absurd black com­e­dy, Death to Smoochy, exists as one such film.

The twist­ed satire both illu­mi­nates and mocks the bru­tal­i­ty and cor­rup­tion behind the ruth­less indus­try of children’s tele­vi­sion, and makes no bones about it. Rain­bow Ran­dolph (Robin Williams) is fired from his job as a children’s TV host and replaced by Smoochy (Edward Nor­ton), an over­ly opti­mistic per­former in a fluffy, fuch­sia rhi­noc­er­os cos­tume who sky­rock­ets to fame, despite not being able to fath­om the idea that his col­leagues, unlike him, are sole­ly in it for the mon­ey. Inevitably, the cut­throat nature of the indus­try means that Smoochy becomes a tar­get of not only Randolph’s vengeance, but also the peo­ple pulling the strings.

Death to Smoochy flopped at the box office, gross­ing a lit­tle shy of $8.5m domes­ti­cal­ly. Crit­ics were quick to slam the film as ​‘odd’, ​‘inex­plic­a­ble’ and ​‘unpleas­ant’. Such descrip­tions were not wrong. Indeed, Death to Smoochy is all of these things, but as a cyn­i­cal com­e­dy, this is all part of its charm. While the film piv­ots around children’s char­ac­ters, it is not a children’s movie in the slight­est. The seedy, deeply dis­turb­ing under­ly­ing nature of the film is dis­guised by the colour­ful, child-like con­text of the indus­try which it mocks. Essen­tial­ly, it’s about sociopaths pur­su­ing and try­ing to kill their rivals, demon­strat­ing how mon­ey is the root of all evil.

Above all, though, it’s about greed. DeVi­to has been known to both direct and act in films that poke fun at society’s weak­ness­es in equal mea­sures of mali­cious­ness and light-heart­ed­ness. Here he ridicules the children’s enter­tain­ment indus­try while bring­ing to light the com­mer­cial, dog-eat-dog aspect of children’s tele­vi­sion by exem­pli­fy­ing the prof­itable agen­da of sell­ing plas­tic and sug­ary com­mer­cial prod­ucts off the back of the tele­vi­sion shows. ​“We’re not look­ing at kids, we’re look­ing at wal­lets with pig­tails,” are DeVito’s own words, echoed by Smoochy as he strug­gles to com­pre­hend the sheer mag­ni­tude of manip­u­la­tive schem­ing that goes on beneath the sur­face of an indus­try that, as he sees it, exists to pro­vide enter­tain­ment for children.

The film’s mor­bid sense of humour is per­haps most promi­nent in Robin Williams’ high­ly amus­ing per­for­mance as a cor­rupt kid­dy-host bor­der­ing on clin­i­cal­ly insane. His twist­ed take on Rain­bow Ran­dolph is evi­dence of his act­ing diver­si­ty, also evok­ing some of his ear­ly stand-up work. What explic­it­ly seeps through in Williams’ per­for­mance is his for­mer rela­tion to the back­stab­bing side of the busi­ness based on his own expe­ri­ences in tele­vi­sion, with the pop­u­lar sit­com Mork & Mindy being can­celled after its fourth season.

Whether it’s fram­ing Smoochy into per­form­ing live at a neo-Nazi ral­ly, or replac­ing a batch of cook­ies with penis-shaped bis­cuits on Smoochy’s live show before pro­ceed­ing to run on stage shout­ing obscen­i­ties such as ​“It’s a one-eyed won­der weasel!” in front of the pre­teen stu­dio audi­ence, Williams only adds to his hilar­i­ous lega­cy. It’s his out­ra­geous per­for­mance that makes this tremen­dous­ly fun­ny, admit­ted­ly absurd satire well worth revisiting.

Death to Smoochy is now avail­able to buy or rent on iTunes and Ama­zon, along with 39 titles from Film4’s library. Check out the full list at film4​.com