Zemeckis' film boasts all the requirements of film noir - loser detective, femme fatale, patsy, shadowy noir look, corrupt big business interests - and yet is really an anti-noir: the negative stereotypes are reversed; the dissolution of boundaries and breakdown of reason, so traumatic in noir, is here celebrated.
This is the work of the animation half, itself a form hostile to boundaries and reason, even if the thriller mechanics means it is not quite as liberated as the average Looney Toon. Not only is this (possibly) the first blockbuster film to allude to Joyce's 'Ulysses' (the Toon Town/Night Town sequence), but is also an allegory of the McCarthy era, reminding us how animation bravely protested when live action kept schtum.
This is the work of the animation half, itself a form hostile to boundaries and reason, even if the thriller mechanics means it is not quite as liberated as the average Looney Toon. Not only is this (possibly) the first blockbuster film to allude to Joyce's 'Ulysses' (the Toon Town/Night Town sequence), but is also an allegory of the McCarthy era, reminding us how animation bravely protested when live action kept schtum.