For our annual summer countdown, we are looking at our favorite 25 movies that were not huge hits during their initial release, but mean a lot to us. Check out last year’s Summer of Stars countdown or the year before when we did blockbusters!

by Tori Potenza, Staff Writer

Death to Smoochy was released in March of 2002. I was 11 years old and for some reason something about the advertising for this R-rated dark comedy spoke to me. I could not wait to see it. Perhaps it had to do with the casting of Robin Williams whom I loved. I remember begging my parents to let me see Patch Adams for the same reason. Or perhaps it had more to do with the fact that I found something appealing about a movie that made fun of children’s shows like Barney and Friends. I was no longer a “baby” who watched things like it, and anything that made fun of the purple dinosaur was usually a hit with kids my age. Regardless, I was overjoyed when my aunt let me rent it from Blockbuster while I was staying with her one weekend, and I have been a Smoochy fan ever since. Though it had been years since I had seen it, this rewatch did offer some insights as to why this may have been such a flop. But one thing is for sure, the appeal of this to an 11 year old begs the question, who was the target audience for Death to Smoochy?

Death to Smoochy takes us into the dark work of children’s show performers. Rainbow Randolph (Robin Williams) is the biggest name in the business, but his reputation is tarnished when it is revealed he is accepting bribes from desperate parents who want their children on the show. Executives at the channel “Kidnet” scramble to find a replacement that will not any dark secrets like Randolph. This leads them to performer Sheldon Mopes (Edward Norton) who loves performing his purple rhino character Smoochy. He hopes he can make the lives of children better but once he takes the job he realizes that everyone is ready and waiting to corrupt him for their own personal gain. Unbeknownst to him, his biggest threat may be Randolph, who will do anything to get his show back. 

When the movie came out, Roger Ebert gave the film a negative review but opened it by stating that “Only enormously talented people could have made Death to Smoochy. Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience. To make a film this awful, you have to have enormous ambition and confidence, and dream big dreams.” While this is a better movie than Ebert gives it credit for, he makes some important points here that are hard to argue with. The theatrical trailer in itself barely scratches the surface of how dark this movie actually is. It plays up its comedic tones and classic Williams performance in the advertising so there is much that a potential audience would not know going in. It makes sense that this would appeal to children! But with its R rating, this was clearly not made for them, and it is unclear how many adults would be interested in a film about children’s performers. 

In recent years it seems that the film has gained more of a following, which makes sense. Those who grew up with Barney are now adults, and they can see the appeal of a film that parodies a piece of their childhood. In 2017, the manga series Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan came out and was turned into a anime. It is all about the dark lives of several children’s show performers showcasing the day to day headaches the face, the increasingly irrational demands of the studio, and the broken dreams that lead them to their career path. It is hard to imagine that this popular dark comedy did not take some inspiration from Smoochy considering the similar content and tone. 

When watched with a 2023 lens, Smoochy has plenty of cultural relevance in its various themes. For one, it is a movie about cancel culture, before cancel culture was really discussed. Randolph was “canceled” and clearly with good reason, and his idea to frame Sheldon for misdeeds that would tarnish his clean reputation makes plenty of sense. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie features Randolph staging an elaborate plan to get Sheldon to perform at a Nazi rally without him knowing about it. It is particularly dark and funny considering that Edward Norton played a white supremacist in the dram American History X just a few years before. With the resurgence of this movement thanks to the likes of Trump, it is hard to ignore the relevance. 

The other major theme in Death to Smoochy is corporate greed and the biggest enemy of them all, capitalism. Immediately we see how the television studio has monetized on Randolph to cell anything from sugary cereal, to poorly made toys, to expensive ice skating shows. When Randolph is fired, they simply need another person that fits the bill to come in so they can continue selling and marketing these items to their audience by simpy changing the branding. In this way it shares interesting thematic threads with another flop from the following year, Josie and the Pussycats. Everyone is out to make money in these movies. In the darker moments, much of the movie is shot and framed like a noir, especially in regards to its main villain, Merv Green (Harvey Fierstein) the head of the Parade of Hope Charity. When a movie posits charities as villainous greedy corporations (sometimes rightly so) and the Irish Mob as loyal group out to help people, it can be easy to see how some audiences might have issues with the content. 

All the while the movie actually is more about Sheldon than Randolph or anyone else. While Sheldon’s crunchy granola lifestyle is a dated exaggeration of those who have unbridaled enthusiasm and idealism for their work, it does feel relatable. How many of us have grown up with big ideas about changing the world just to realize how difficult that is? How many of us come into a job or career with grand plans on how we can do good, only to have that job chew up any last bit of enthusiasm we have and spit us out like used gum? Like Sheldon, many of us encounter those who have become hardened to the world and corrupted by personal gain, and unfortunately it is all too easy to become just like them. Living in an age where it feels that we are constantly on the brink of environmental and societal collapse it is hard not to sympathize with Sheldon, and maybe even hope that we can bring back a little bit of that enthusiasm into our lives. His ultimate quest to put on a free event for children and reopen a clinic for people addicted to drugs is admirable in a time where so many are suffering. 

Danny Devito is a talented director and clearly had a vision when crafting this movie. As Ebert says, only people with big dreams and ambition could make something like this. Its noir tones with cartoonish saturated colors are not unlike the works of Tim Burton or the much more popular Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The ongoing, one sided struggle between Randolph and Sheldon is not unlike the struggle of Salieri and Mozart that plays out in Amadeus. It is full of interesting ideas and references, some of which were just not right for 2002. Even with its dark tone, it has a sweet love story, a lead that you root for, and themes around restorative justice, mindfulness, and the recognition that we should feel all of our feelings. In that way it may have had better messaging than most children’s shows, and ideas that adults should be reminded of. So it is not unsurprising that it flopped, and something this layered and ambitious is almost impossible to market. But tying it to the themes of Smoochy, maybe that is okay. It is not all about money, it is about ideas and art and putting them out there for the right audience to find.