The Flintstones

> _Barney Rubble: Is that short for something?
Mrs. Pyrite: Bamm-Bamm-Bamm. You're going to have to take it slowly with this one. He doesn't speak yet and is a little skittish around humans, but, then again, I would be too if I'd been raised by wild mastodons. Ha ha ha.
Betty Rubble, Barney Rubble: Mastodons?
Mrs. Pyrite: Let's not nitpick! A mammal's a mammal._
===
Hear hear!

To Reddit, _Idiocracy_ is a documentary; to Creationists, Hanna Barbera's _The Flintstones_ is.

I grew up eating Flintstones vitamins, barely remember the cartoon, and could not remember a single thing that happened or even most of the cast of this film, so it effectively worked as a first watch in 2025, the year of the American fascist coup.

I don't generally like slapstick, absolutely loathe "Red Text On A White Background" reference parodies, but I have a weakness for stupid puns, social satire, and absurdism. So if you liked _Kung Pow_ and _Mars Attacks_ but hate movies like _Scary Movie_, I'd recommend _The Flintstones_.

[spoiler] When a film reaches 20-30 years old it can only truly be viewed as a work of its day, but I struggle to think of a workaday morality play comedy made more recently that works any better than this. The film's story and characters are so boilerplate and archetypal that you immediately recognize them if you're over 30 and not a Republican/Christofascist (Yes, I'm being Ameri-centric because foreign viewers obviously get a pass on not recognizing specifically American cultural nuance).

But there's still enough depth to write an essay on the scenario and characters within it since everything in the film is so grounded in the lived reality of the people and institutions they represent. To whit: Fred is a piece of shit, because people are terrible and lack scruples but for the grace of positive enabling circumstances; and I was really pleased to see that the film didn't flinch on showing his veneer of selfishly motivated empathy evaporate once he was flush with cash and luxxing it up. Wilma (despite enabling and reproducing with her boorish bafoon of a husband) seems to be closer to a more fundamentally moral and self-sacrificing person, as many women tend to be compared to men, but even she falls prey to the high tower disease of wasting empathy and creeping resentment. Fred likes Barney because he relies on taking advantage of him, which Barney willingly enables. But Fred, unlike Mclaughlin's character, isn't a Cluster B MBA, so a little bit of public shaming and intercession with acceptance and forgiveness allows him to reform.
[/spoiler]

Aside the social commentary, both blaringly obvious and more implied, I found the cast worked fairly well. Goodman was perfect casting, and Moranis and Wilma were good choices. And wow, Elizabeth Perkins was a total babe and managed to be a believable cartoon wife and mom without making it painful to see her with the lumbering galoot of a husband, which is a gift. Harvey Korman's Dictabird and Mclaughlin were both highlights. Ironically, Vandercave was the more cartoonish of the two. And Haley Berry... Good god, she was unbelievably hot in this. But more than that, she was really likable as the villainess of dubious moral impairment, and the last lines shared by Fred and Stone was my favorite moment of pure, stupid American action movie finale quippage.

I laughed. I laughed some more. I drooled. I cynically pursed my lips at the end when Fred called for steaks since we're on a planet with a rapidly destabilizing ecosystem largely thanks to beef cultivation. There's also a lot of animal exploitation in the movie, which they tacitly acknowledge in a single throwaway line with the (completely unnecessary, just like animal agriculture) can opener bird.

Stop eating meat. Poison your local fascist.

In 1994 I loved it. I thought it was actually pretty well made and felt more like the cartoon than many of the other live action adaptations. The movie is well cast despite Rosie O'Donell as Betty; who at least did the voice pretty well.
Nothing Oscar worthy but it was pretty faithful to the show and better than the unnecessary prequel.

Quite fun for fans of the Flintstones. Not great but Goodman and Morranis save the movie from being terrible.

Yabba-Dabba Do! Everyone’s favorite modern Stone Age family, The Flintstones, is brought to the big screen as a live-action screwball comedy. The film follows a quarry worker named Fred Flintstone who receives a promotion to VP and is setup as a patsy for an embezzlement scheme. Starring John Goodman, Rick Moranis, Elizabeth Perkins, Rosie O'Donnell, Kyle MacLachlan, and Halle Berry, the film features an impressive cast. But while they do a fair job of imitating cartoon characters, the performances don’t really work in a live-action setting. And the same goes for the set designs and creature puppets, which do an amazing job at capturing a cartoon aesthetic, yet end up looking incredibly fake. Additionally, the comedy is rather hit-and-miss, with a mixture of prehistoric puns and slapstick. The Flintstones is entertaining and may work for young kids, but it lacks the wit and charm of the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

It's not good, and it's not clever, just a tirade of product placement and silly references to adults.

That made me grimace rather than smile.