Conference bookie::movies

    Entertainment Tonight did a 5 minute thing on this several months ago. 
    If I remeber correctly, John goodman as Fred, Rick Moranis (Honey I 
    Shrunk The Kids) will play Barney, Liz Taylor will play Wilma's 
    mom - I forget the rest)
    
    They specifically showed FRed and Barney in the car - Fred's feet do
    stick out tthe bottom like in the cartoon but its powered like a golf
    cart.  The sets looked pretty colorful - and the houses all seemed to
    be shades of brown and gray to give them the stone look.
    
    I don't remember the release date - most likely a summer-release movie,
    I'm really looking forwardto it 1) looked the toon 2) love John
    Goodman's stuff 3) curious to see them pull off the special effects
    
    Jt

    The original release date was Dec 19. They couldn't get the film cut in
    time so they pushed the film out till the end of January. It may 
    get pushed out again but I doubt it.
                                Jeff Peters

    Also stars Rosie O'Donnell as Betty.

    I saw a poster of it at our local theater, so it shouldn't be too far
    away. 
    
    Michael

    Re .5: Done. Just leave the tip on the table.
    
    -b

I saw a trailer for this when I went to see Jurassic Park July '93

Oliver

    
    So is Barney going to play Dino?????????     :^)

    
    
    Rosie O'Donnell, in an interview, said that it was opening at the end
    of May...
    
    

    Can't wait for this one!!  My husband looks exactly like Fred, in fact,
    a lot of people we know call him Fred Flintstone.d

There's a character in the British soap - Brookside, called Mandy Jordache...
She would make an excellent Fred Flintstone ;-) Anyone else seen her?

Norman

    In the poster at our local theater, it had Steven Speilrock as the
                                                          (Berg)
    director, so maybe this movie will have specail effects, if they have any.
     (They probably will though, like, how is Dio going to be done?)
     

>    In the poster at our local theater, it had Steven Speilrock as the
>                                                          (Berg)
>    director, so maybe this movie will have specail effects, if they have any.
>     (They probably will though, like, how is Dio going to be done?)
 
    	I would think there'll be extensive use of puppets ( think about
    the old cartoon series - everything was done with a living animal ie;
    the phonograph, the horn and phone ( i think ) were birds, the tv
    antenna was ( a rabbit?  something... ) )
    
    	Also, they're going to have to use pretty extensive FX to do some
    of the things that happen to crartoons to live actors.
    
    	As an aside - my favorite Stephen Wright joke
    
    	next time you're driving a car with a passenger, say this, "Hold
    on - I wanna try something.  I saw this in a cartoon once, but i think
    I can do it!"    
        					Jim

    Think about the special effects. How much will be done on Digital Alpha
    AXP?? Probably not much. Jurassic Park was done with SGI.
    
    

    I saw a preview for The Flinstones on Entertainment Tonight last night.
    It looks great!  I hope they didn't show the best parts in the trailer.
    They did a direct comparison of the opening of the cartoon to the
    movie, and it was incredible.  John Goodman stars as Fred(and looks to
    be perfect for the part), Elizabeth Perkins(I think) as Wilma, Rosie 
    O'Donnell as Betty, and Rick Moranis as Barney.  I can't wait to see
    this one with the kids!  Great casting.
    
    				Donna

    Question:  did they use John Goodman's real hair (in other words,
    not a wig or plastic cap)?  The reason I ask is because I've noticed
    this season on Roseanne, his hair is much lighter and poofier and
    I thought it looked a lot like Fred's except I would have thought
    it would be darker (but who knows).  
    
    Jodi-

    I noticed that too about his hair.  It does look like a wig.  I thought
    maybe he was going bald.
    
    

    My opinion is they dyed his real hair black for the Fred Flintstone 
    part so he had to wear a wig for the episodes at the beginning of the 
    season. In Roseanne, he *is* wearing a wig. You can tell in the back of
    the head.
    
    
    Marilyn

    Since he probably died his hair for the movie, he may have had a "wig"
    on during the Roseanne episodes.
    
    Just my guess.
    
    -sandy
    

So - has anybody seen this yet? Any care to give a review?

/scott    

Alex (age 9) and I saw it Sunday, and it was actually better than 
I expected, thanks in great part to Steven "Spielrock's" F/X 
contributions.  Dino was seamlessly done; closeups must have been 
part puppet, but there were lots of long shots of him bounding 
around the house, and they had to be Jurassic-Park-style computer 
generated.  In the closeups he and (especially) the garbage 
disposal looked like they were made by the people who did the 
"Dinosaurs" TV characters.  You only get to see the sabre-tooth 
tiger twice (opening and closing segments, just like the 
cartoons), which is a shame.  They could have used his character 
well.

At any rate, the plot was nothing to write home about, but it was 
typical Flintstones and I wasn't expecting any great shakes.  
There are career problems, petty and grand disagreements, a 
villain very well played by Kyle MacLachlan (sp?) and a suitably 
slinky secretary (Halle Berry).  Some sly visual gags: the kids 
will pick up on a "Toysasaurus" store in the background (instead 
of Toys R Us, natch) but what killed me was the sculpture outside 
of Slate's headquarters.  I'm not sure many people in our 
audience picked up on it; let's see how many in MOVIES do.

Cameos: Jonathan Winters (there's never enough of him!) and HANNA 
and BARBERA!  But, drat, I missed them--just saw their names in 
the cast crawl.  Also Richard Moll has a small part (a member of 
Fred and Barney's bowling league).  I'd been hearing that 
Elizabeth Taylor had a cameo as Wilma's mother, but she had 
several scenes (albeit short ones); she was way too pretty for a 
MIL  :-) but I won't hold that against her!

They kept some of the signature Hanna-Barbera sound effects, and 
the foot-powered vehicles are, you should pardon the expression, 
a "running" gag.  I could have used a few more Bedrock modern 
conveniences, but those which were showcased were good.

All 4 of the leads were very well cast, IMO, and the kids were 
decent (Pebbles in particular listened and reacted well).  Wilma 
is a thankless role IMO, but she (Elizabeth Perkins?) had the 
"Fre-ed!" down perfectly.  At one point she's wearing her hair 
loose, and for me it detracted from the Wilma illusion.  I would 
have said that she had the Bedrock-women laugh down perfectly 
too, except that Rosie O'Donnell *nailed* it!  John Goodman was 
*born* to play Fred, and poor man, he knows this is going to 
haunt him for the rest of his life (on "Eye to Eye" he held up 
the Fred doll and said something like, "Hello, I stole John 
Goodman's soul!").  He had the voice down perfectly too.  Rick 
Moranis was a good choice; he looked just like Barney, but I 
found myself wondering during the movie whether Barney really 
ever had a signature phrase or voice (guess if he did, Rick 
missed it).

Sorry to ramble, but I infrequently post reviews and I wanted to 
do a brain dump before it fades (brain cells aren't what they 
used to be).

Leslie

    I took the kids yesterday.  Good family fun.  Leslie capped it real
    well in the previous note.  
    
    I loved the sound effects...
    
    
    
    
    
    
    twinkle toes when bowling, feet slapping when driving the car, etc.
    
    Hanna and Barbera were there - one of them is seen in the board room,
    I think the other is at a restaurant...it will tell you in the credits.
    
    Twitch Twitch!!
    
    -sjd


>the cast crawl.  Also Richard Moll has a small part (a member of 
>Fred and Barney's bowling league).  I'd been hearing that 

Ha!  I love it!

    Ha!!!   (:-}
    
    But he's almost unrecognizeable, as he has both facial AND CRANIAL
    hair!
    
    Leslie

    FWIW, I think Barney's "signature" phrase is his Norton-esque "Hey,
    Fred!".  That's and being short, blond and rectangular is about all
    there is to Barney. :)  
    
    
    cheers,
    
    kim

My favorite phrase of Barney's is "Fred!  The WIVES!"

    It was....weird. 
    
    
    Most of the theatre seemed to like it.  They laughed in all the right
    spots.  To me, it was a throughly surreal experience.  There are some
    things that just shouldn't be done in live action, I think, and The
    Flintstone is one of them.  
    
    As a movie goes, it really wasn't very good.  Editing was choppy, poor
    John Goodman got reined in more than he probably should have and the
    plot had all the depth of...well, a cartoon. :)  I can't believe it
    took 32 writers to think of a 90 minute Flintstones script, but hey.
    That's Hollywood.  
    
    But, as a 90 minute Flintstones cartoon went, I guess it was all right. 
    Like I said, almost everybody in the theatre (mostly adults, older than
    me) was giggling.  The actors did the characters as well as one could
    expect.  The effects were cheesy, but well done for cheesy.  
    
    Based on that, I'd suppose it's good family entertainment.  I was too
    much overwhelmed by the weirdness of it all and in retrospect, had it
    not been for the company I was keeping, I'd have written the movie off
    entirely as an admission-price mistake.  The Flintstones is not the
    worst movie I've seen, but I'll remember it as one of the most surreal.  
    
    
    *.75 out of ****
    
    
    kim
    
    

    I got to see this last weekend... I'm kinda mixed in my likes and
    dislikes...
    
    The movie was mostly boring for me... but lots of it were momentary
    entertainment value... a few chuckles here and there, maybe one or two
    actual laughs from me. 
    
    As noted, Goodman was perfect for the role, he had the voice down pat,
    Bettys giggle was picture-perfect. Dino was one of the few laughs I
    had...done very well. I had more fun actually picking out the in-humor
    points (RockDonalds...19 dozen served, Speilrock, etc.) and cameo's
    than I really did watching the movie. 
    
    Good FX, good acting, poor plot. Loved Mr. Slate. Goodman IS
    Flintstone. Can't say I'm interested in a sequel, but it was worth
    seeing once.
    
    Michael

    As someone said, (can't remember if it was in this notesfile). This was
    nothing that couldn't have been done better in a cartoon.
    
    That being said, I kinda enjoyed it; I went expecting the worst. My 4
    1/2 son enjoyed it more. I think it was at his level.
    
    My favorite part of the movie after FF:
    
    
    I LOVED the movie they went to see: TAR WARS!
    
    
    Marilyn

    OOOPS!
    
    I meant my 4 1/2 year old son, of course!
    
    Marilyn

    Is Liz Taylor THIS desperate for a role? Haven't seen one ad or read
    anything in here that would make me want to see this movie. Just can't
    imagine why anyone would want to make this into a movie. If it has 4-6
    year olds laughing, I think I will skip it. Doubt I would even rent a
    video of this. The power of advertising and big $$ advertising budgets
    at it's finest. 

    RE: the sculpture out front..
    
    
    
    I've been to Chicago several times and recognized the Picasoesque
    version of the same - the Flintstone version had a prehistoric horn 
    added to itthat made me chuckle (BTW: I saw this movie this past
    weekend while in Cestwood IL with my cousins who knew the sculpture
    well)
    
    Also...for "The Christmas Story" fans...Fred (I assume it was his and 
    not Wilma's) Owns a "Leg lamp" :^))))))))))) bahahaahaa
    
    Other things were as subtle as that - like a scan of the Flintstone
    yard showed the kids' toys, a stone "cozy coupe" was one
    
    Great movie - when in context of a 'cartoon come to life' but by
    no means is in competition to the other movie I saw - Forest Gump!
    
    Joyce