{"id":32763,"date":"2020-02-21T08:46:53","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T13:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=32763"},"modified":"2020-02-21T08:46:53","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T13:46:53","slug":"the-bootleg-files-the-flintstones-on-the-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/21\/the-bootleg-files-the-flintstones-on-the-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files – The Flintstones: On the Rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 720:<\/strong> \u201cThe Flintstones: On the Rocks\u201d (2001 made-for-television animated film).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On the Internet Archive
\n
\nAMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.
\n
\nREASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: <\/strong>It seems to have fallen through the proverbial cracks. <\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Unlikely.<\/p>\n

In 1960, ABC premiered \u201cThe Flintstones\u201d as the first animated sitcom to air in prime time. The show was a riff on \u201cThe Honeymooners\u201d set in prehistoric times, and it immediately resonated with viewers who kept it on the air for a six-season run.
\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Flintstones\u201d never disappeared from sight. The Hanna-Barbera production brought forth a charming feature film (\u201cA Man Called Flintstone\u201d), spinoff series, a number of one-shot specials (including three different Christmas productions \u2013 which is kind of weird, considering the caveman characters were celebrating Christ\u2019s birth) and a wealth of merchandising including breakfast cereals and children\u2019s vitamins. The latter also inspired one of Rodney Dangerfield\u2019s best wisecracks: \u201cOooh, these kids play around early \u2013 now they have birth control pills shaped like Fred Flintstone.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the dawn of the 2000s, however, it seemed as if the Flintstones were played out. Yeah, the old series was available on DVD and was being rerun on cable television, but some supposedly bright people believed that a new decade\/century\/millennium required a new approach to the old vehicle. By that time, Hanna-Barbera was absorbed by the Warner Bros. Animation operation. Cable television\u2019s Cartoon Network was also a Warner Bros. Animation company, so it took control of \u201cThe Flintstones\u201d characters to create a film designed to reboot the franchise with a visceral and edgy attitude.<\/p>\n

The resulting work, \u201cThe Flintstones: On the Rocks,\u201d could easily qualify as the worst animated film of all time. Now, I am aware that calling anything the worst of all time could be considered the ultimate in sloppy reviewing. But this is not an exaggeration \u2013 there has never been an animated film that was more charmless and less entertaining than this monstrosity. Really, it is the type of film that would cause a cinephile religious fanatic to look skyward and try to negotiate with God to restore \u201cLondon After Midnight\u201d in exchange for erasing all copies of this production.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Flintstones: On the Rocks\u201d opens with an angry Fred and a depressed Wilma bearing their souls in the office of a diminutive marriage counselor named Dr. Schwartzenquartz. The therapist tries to solve the couple\u2019s problems through role playing, with each pretending to be the other. Fred dramatizes Wilma as a lazy ninny who bursts into tears at the tiniest suggestion of annoyance, while Wilma presents Fred as a crass dope who is more interested in hanging out with his best friend Barney. When Fred reveals Wilma dyes her red hair, she turns violent and begins to attack Fred and destroy the therapist\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

The next day while at work in the Slate & Co. rock quarry, Fred believes he is going to receive a promotion. But his boss, Mr. Slate, gives the promotion to Barney. Fred is furious, and things get more difficult when Barney and his wife Betty turn up at Fred and Wilma\u2019s house to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Fred and Wilma each forgot the anniversary date and start a fight, but Barney tries to mollify matters by announcing a wedding gift: Barney and Betty are taking Fred and Wilma on an all-expenses-paid trip to the resort town of Rockapulco.<\/p>\n

But the change of scenery does not change the Flintstones\u2019 troubled marriage. Fred finds himself flirting with a sexy senorita while Wilma gets the intention of a blonde hunk \u2013 but unbeknownst to her, he\u2019s really a jewel thief in pursuit of a purloined gem that somehow wound up in Wilma\u2019s possession.<\/p>\n

Four people were credited with writing \u201cThe Flintstones: On the Rocks,\u201d but none of them seemed to possess a sense of humor. The script is crude and mean-spirited without ever once detouring into situations that were genuinely funny, and the vicious relationship between Fred and Wilma is closer in spirit to Edward Albee than Hanna-Barbera. The biggest problem is Fred\u2019s personality, which is pathologically abusive throughout most of the film. In one scene that is astonishing for the wrong reasons, Fred teases his pet dinosaur Dino into believing he is joining them on the trip, only to berate the animal\u2019s intelligence by forcing him to stay alone at home, adding he\u2019s not to \u201cdo anything stupid\u201d while on his solitary watch, which causes the poor creature to cry. This is supposed to be amusing?<\/p>\n

The film also inserts a lot of supposedly adult humor into the mix \u2013 or, at least, a puerile concept of what adult comedy is all about. Thus, we have Fred coming home from work and heading to the bathroom for an (offscreen) excretory relief followed by a too-loud toilet flush. Later on, Fred mistakes the hotel room\u2019s bidet for a water fountain. Fred and Barney also march their blubbery bodies around the hotel pool while wearing tight thongs, causing the other guests to cover their mouths and hold in their vomit. Are you laughing yet?<\/p>\n

Even if the script managed to come within the vicinity of being spot-on, the animation is so crude that it makes Gene Deitch\u2019s Tom and Jerry cartoons look like grand works of art. Hanna-Barbera used to take a lot of criticism for its limited animation style, but \u201cThe Flintstones: On the Rocks\u201d is the tackiest and ugliest animation imaginable. Fred and Barney have too-big noses, Wilma and Betty have heads that are too tremendous for their bodies, and everyone moves in a spastic manner.<\/p>\n

Cartoon Network may have realized it had a major bomb with \u201cThe Flintstones: On the Rocks.\u201d The film had a single U.S. telecast on November 3, 2001, and was later shown once in Japan. To date, there has been no home entertainment release in any format. This was also the last (to date) original production using \u201cThe Flintstones\u201d characters.<\/p>\n

An unauthorized posting of this film can be found on the Internet Archive<\/a> site \u2013 how long it stays there is anyone\u2019s guess, as Warner Bros. Animation is usually pretty swift in removing bootleg postings. Hopefully, they find and erase it quickly, because no one should be wasting their time watching this crap. <\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em>
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\nListen to the Rondo Award-nominated podcast \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud, now in its fourth season. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 720: \u201cThe Flintstones: On the Rocks\u201d (2001 made-for-television animated film). LAST SEEN: On the Internet Archive AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It seems to have fallen through the proverbial cracks. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Unlikely. In 1960, ABC premiered \u201cThe Flintstones\u201d as the first animated sitcom to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":32764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[99,178,219,1278,2445],"class_list":["post-32763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-animation","tag-cartoon-network","tag-comedy","tag-the-flintstones","tag-the-flintstones-on-the-rocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32765,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32763\/revisions\/32765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}