A cartoon is a cartoon, but John Goodman and Rick Moranis are not Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. Goodman blusters and Moranis dweebs through a formulaic script about how Fred almost comes a cropper through his ambition to rise from his job driving a brontosaurus at the quarry. Fred and wife, Wilma (Elizabeth Perkins), dream of the sweet life, but as Barney’s wife, Betty (Rosie O’Donnell), says, ““Fred’s no Albert Einstone.’’ Director Brian Levant gives us 90 minutes of this gravel. The actors are outcharmed by the dinosaurs, pterodactyls and mammoths created by the special-effects wizards (although Elizabeth Taylor looks smashing in a cameo as Fred’s bitchy mother-in-law, Pearl Slaghoople). ““The Flintstones’’ is a lot of Yabba-Dabba-Doo-doo.
PHOTO: Goodman and Moranis
Subject Terms: FLINTSTONES, The (Motion picture)
Copyright 1994 Newsweek: not for distribution outside of Newsweek Inc.
