When 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' started unexpectedly with the Maroon Cartoon '
Somethin's Cookin'', audiences were treated to something most of them had probably never seen before in their lives. A full-blown, high-production value late 40's style, manically paced animated theatrical short, on the big screen. To call it jaw-dropping would be an understatement. The animation and the pace of the action hit you like an electric current, and for a generation raised on the the limited animation of Hanna Barbara and Filmation, seeing something like this with state of the art big budget animation was unprecedented.

That short was of course, very cleverly, part of the feature itself, and blended into it seamlessly, but in the aftermath of WFRR's success, Disney/Amblin made three further standalone animated RR theatrical shorts, which they would run before features (this one was on with 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids').

The first thing you notice is that the beginning is very similar to 'Somethin's Cookin''. Baby Herman's mum goes out and leaves Roger to look after him with dire threats of what will happen if he screws up. In fact all four of the RR shorts follow this same basic premise. Herman's mum leaves Roger to look after him, whereupon he immediately starts doing things which expose him to extreme danger. Roger leaps to the rescue, and there follows a maniacal sequence of action gags in which he is variously crushed, hurled, inflated, set fire to, cooked, falls into sawmill blades... you name it. At the end Baby Herman naturally emerges unharmed and the end shot will involve a cut to the live action studio where the toons (who we must remember are actors) work, where some minor slip-up means that Roger has to do the whole thing all over.

If this seems formulaic, you're right. But it's a parody/tribute to late 40's theatrical shorts, many of which WERE formulaic in just the same way. i.e., characters a) and b) always have some (usually adverserial) relationship, which nearly always ends up delivering a similar scenario - only the details change. In the Roger Rabbit shorts, the details are the amount and variety of pyrotechnic, over-the-top action which Roger can be subjected to, and how much violence he can cop in seven minutes. In fact I rather think these shorts may have influenced the 'Itchy and Scratchy' cartoons on The Simpsons (though they're nowhere near as ghraphically violent)

'Tummy Trouble' is the first of the three shorts which were produced post WFRR, and to my mind is marginally the weakest of the three. Baby Herman swallows his rattle. Roger rushes him to hospital but when they arrive the rattle somehow ends up inside Roger, and he gets wheeled down to be operated on, on a table which resembles a bear trap. Luckily at this stage Baby Herman mistakes a huge radioactive cylinder for a giant baby's bottle, setting off an insane action sequence of flying knives, falling elevators, jet-propelled God-knows-whatsits, explosions (why a hospital would store a huge mound of explosives at the end of a corridor is anyone's guess) and more (bloodless) violence than any rabbit should be asked to endure.

It's funny, the 2D animation is gorgeous, and if I'm docking it a little, it's only because the action - which is what these shorts are basically about - isn't quite as insanely full throttle as in the subsequent shorts, and a couple of specific ideas were re-hashed from the first cartoon, when something a little different would have improved things.

Still lots of fun, and dazzling to watch, even if the Baby Herman/Roger shorts ultimately don't work quite as well as standalone works, as the golden age classic as they're saluting, partly, perhaps, because they never made enough of them for us to feel we know the characters and plot expectations inside-out.

Oh, yeah. Droopy makes an appearance in all these shorts, as does Jessica. Rather odd at first to see her animated the same way as Roger and the others.