FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS, THE/ *1/2

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The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas

*1/2

Rated on a 4-star scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Manchester)
Released in the UK by UIP on July 28, 2000; certificate U; 90 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1

Directed by Brian Levant; produced by Bruce Cohen.
Written by Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr., Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan.
Photographed by Jamie Anderson; edited by Kent Beyda.

CAST.....
Mark Addy..... Fred Flintstone
Stephen Baldwin..... Barney Rubble
Kristen Johnston..... Wilma Slaghoople
Jane Krakowski..... Betty O'Shale
Thomas Gibson..... Thomas Rockefeller
Joan Collins..... Pearl Slaghoople
Alex Meneses..... Roxie
Alan Cumming..... Gazoo/Mike Jagged

Now I've seen it all. Here is a movie about prehistoric characters with a framing device involving a midget green alien named Gazoo. He's a special effect with the face and voice of Alan Cumming, an actor who plays a human character in the movie also, even though he and Gazoo have no connection.

Are you getting this? I didn't. But "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas" is so inane and tacky at every level, from such an early stage, that at no point are we disappointed by any of its wrong turns. It's very easy to sit through despite being dreadful, because it's colourful, you can let it fly past you, and every now and again you just gotta laugh -- the kind of laughter that comes out as shocked gasping, and you shake your head at the same time.

The movie is not a sequel to director Brian Levant's 1994 "The Flintstones", that big-budget adaptation of the famous Hanna-Barbera cartoon show about a "modern stone-age family". It's a prequel, taking place when Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, Wilma Slaghoople and Betty O'Shale were all single. The screenplay uses incredibly laborious plotting to introduce the guys and gals -- Gazoo, determined to find information on human mating rituals, has to play matchmaker, despite being invisible to everyone except Fred and Barney. At least it's a break from the standard Hollywood Meet Cute.

Fred is played by Mark Addy, the chunkiest of the guys from the great 1997 comedy "The Full Monty". He wears a dopey, forced grin throughout this movie, and his accent is the kind that your mates put on when drunk and trying to imitate television characters. It sounds like his teeth have been clamped shut while he simultaneously suppresses giggles and strains on the toilet. Stephen Baldwin, as Barney, acts as if the "South Park" movie was a true story, and he and his brothers really did have bombs dropped on their heads. If you want to know how someone appears after a bad day at the dentist's and the brain surgeon's, check his performance out -- it features a permanently dropped jaw, glazed eyes, and the voice I imagine a Down's Syndrome patient would have while being suffocated with a pillow.

Puns are said to be the lowest form of humour. "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas" is littered with them. The title has one. All the characters' surnames are tacky references to forms of granite. There is a musical group in the movie called Mick Jagged and the Stones. A rich playboy named Thomas Rockefeller. Every line of dialogue squeezes in a corny reference. To be fair, the original show was just as shameless, but the fact that it looked cute in cartoon form gave it a certain charm, so there you go.

Am I recommending the movie for children? No, because it's not very good, and as such I won't urge anybody to see it. I guess it's harmless enough if you have nothing else to do with the tots. Usually I object to "Come on, it's just for kids" as an excuse for bad films, because young people, who soak information into their brains like sponges, deserve quality entertainment more than anyone else. Dross such as "The Rugrats Movie" and "Stuart Little", for reasons I stated in my reviews, are more than just frivolous and verge on the damaging. "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas" is exempt from that kind of criticism. It's just too dumb to deserve praise.

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