# Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, The (2000)

### reviewed by
Mac VerStandig

    The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas
    1/2 Star (Out of 4)
    Reviewed by Mac VerStandig
    critic@moviereviews.org
    http://www.moviereviews.org
    April, 2000

---A copy of this review can be found at http://www.moviereviews.org/flintstones_in_viva_rock_vegas,_the.htm ---

Alan Reed and Mel Blanc are probably rolling over in their graves. Joseph Barbera and William Hanna might just go into shock. It's not that the latest Flintstones movie, Viva Rock Vegas, which `posthumously' credits the latter two as executive producers, is a live action interpretation of their classic animated television series that will cause such reactions. Rather, it is that the movie seems to lack all the non-material traits that made the 1960' s series an integral part of American culture.

A prequel to both the 1994 film and the television series, this installment of Bedrock's favorite two families actually pre-dates their being families. Fred (Mark Addy) and Barney (Stephen Baldwin) are two young bachelors with nothing but their lives ahead of them. Barney is optimistic, exclaiming `we get to spend the rest of our lives working in a rock quarry – who says dreams don't come true?' Fred, on the other hand, desperately seeks a companion and realizes that this will require action, pointing out `it's not like something is just going to drop out of the sky, land right in front of you and change your whole life.' Being that the movie seems to have no original humor, you can guess what happens as soon as Fred finishes the aforementioned statement.

Enter Gazoo (Alan Cumming), the pint-sized alien who is temporarily expelled from his own planet and banished to earth where he is to study human mating rituals. This leads to numerous sexual jokes and an awkward homosexual scene that shouldn't be in a film aimed at America's youngest moviegoers. It is also most ironic that such a subplot is used in a film co-starring Kristen Johnston (Wilma), an actress who has earned notice for her role in television's `3rd Rock from the Sun' – a show with an all-too-similar plot.

Opposite Fred and Barney are Wilma and Betty (Jane Krakowski), who are actually opposites themselves. Wilma is the classic poor-little-rich girl as she struggles with pressure to marry Chip Rockefeller (Thomas Gibson); she is a citizen of the upperclass even though her heart is in the unruly valley of Bedrock, which her mansion overlooks. Borrowing a chapter from another abysmal movie, Titanic, it turns out that Rockefeller is even sleazier than Wilma thinks with his sole purpose of luring her being that he needs her fortune to escape some mob debts. For the mean time, he has Rocko (Danny Woodburn) and Rocko (Tony Longo), his two `favorite made men' on his pre-historic tail. And, should he not wed Wilma by a quickly-approaching deadline, he will `be sleeping with the tunasaurus.'

Betty, on the other hand, is a single waitress with an average apartment and constant smile on her face. She is hip, she is cool and she not only takes Wilma under her wing but accepts a date with Fred even though his pickup line is nothing but a series of incomprehensible grunts. Barney tags along to make it a double date at the carnival and by night's end the couples have swapped, Dino is born and Gazoo is viciously assaulted on a Ferris wheel.

The similarities between Fred and the Coen Brothers' Dude Lebowski, from The Big Lebowski, are a few too many to go unnoticed and far too many to be what Hanna and Barbera had in mind. Yes, they did create Fred's famous two-toe bowling technique but surely they didn't mean for him to be the portly bum he is here. Additionally, Wilma is far larger than she should be, Barney decidedly more pathetic (how appropriate for one of the Baldwins –if only that old SNL skit would come true!) and Betty too promiscuous. Perhaps this could be ignored, although it would certainly be difficult, if the film had the guts to take off its training wheels and ride on its own rather than take the time to pay homage to the original Flintstones couple in a mid-film montage that only serves to remind of more pleasurable entertainment.

Just making matters worse, watching the scenes where the film does venture astray from traditional Bedrock is like taking The Great Movie Ride over and over for 90 minutes. Everything from significant plot lines to quick jokes are stolen from movies ranging from Arsenic and Old Lace and some Three Stooges pictures to the more recent Honeymoon in Vegas and Aladdin.

Yet, despite all the negative aspects of Viva Rock Vegas, I did discover a tear streaming down my face right before the credits rolled. I wondered how this could be and then it struck me – my contact lens had slipped.

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