Die Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas

This is garbage. I kinda of like it. Everything is bad. The plot starts 2/3 of the way into the movie. The writing is horrendous. The acting is god awful. Visually the movie is incredibly ugly. It has some of the worst sound design I have ever heard. Honestly, the best part of this movie (other than Dementia Dad) is the god damn CGI. Also, I still have no idea how old they're supposed to be in this thing, they look 40, they act 40, but they're just graduating college?

I was surprised by this movie.

I hated the original, I suppose because none of the cast of the original (except Elizabeth Perkins) resembled the Cartoon cast.

I'll probably get stoned alive for saying this, but I didn't like John Goodman's Fred Flintstone. I think he played him awkwardly as though, he didn't really want to be in the movie.

But Mark Addy was a lot lot better. OK, he didn't have the voice down to a tee, but he resembles Fred, when made up, a whole lot more than Mr. Goodman.

I just wish they would have asked Elizabeth Perkins to re-create her role as Wilma. She did a great job in the original, and resembled and sounded like the cartoon character, where Kristen Johnston, didn't quite do it for me in the role. She looked far too mature to be playing Wilma, and didn't have the voice either.

But full marks to Stephen Baldwin and Jane Krakowski as Barney and Betty. They were also a lot better than Rick Moranis and Rosie O'Donnell from the original film. Mostly because, again, they sounded like the cartoon characters and Krakowski resembled Betty. (Baldwin in no way looked like Barney though - oh, well, can't be perfect, but he makes up for it with the voice and laugh).

Joan Collins is also hilarious in the film, as the Filthy Rich Mother of Wilma, and again, does a better job that Elizabeth Taylor from the original.

Also watch out for Alan Cumming. He almost steals the film with his "Mike Jagged" from the Stones, while also playing an alien in a dual role.

With great creatures (Jim Henson workshop), good gadgets and an all-round enjoyable film, I give this an 8 out of 10.

"The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas" is actually slightly more bearable than the truly horrible 1994 movie, but that really isn't saying much. Where the previous one suffered from chronically bad casting for the Flintstones and the Rubbles (except for Elizabeth Perkins as Wilma), this benefits from Stephen Baldwin and Jane "Best reason to watch 'Ally McBeal' not called Lucy Liu" Krakowski making a far less annoying Barney and Betty than Rick Moranis and Rosie O'Donnell (the latter the only major cast member to return here, in voice mode only). The movie also has a few nice little touches like pictures of the cartoon Fred and Barney handed out to people, and the specially modified Universal logo with the Earth only showing one continent behind the word "Univershell" ("Did anyone else see those giant letters out there?").

Alan Cumming as the Great Gazoo (and a Mick Jagger-type rock star) is also one of the movie's pros... and indicative of its cons. Writers Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont ("Can't Hardly Wait," "Josie and the Pussycats") and the late Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr ("Top Gun," "Anaconda") go for too many cheap gags, have a wilful disregard for the show's mythology - Gazoo didn't arrive until Fred and Barney were both married with children, for starters (and as another poster rightly says, he crashlanded as opposed to being sent) - and don't really have much of a plot going for them. The movie's all as silly as that episode where the boys befriended "Ann-Margrock" without knowing who she was.

Speaking of which, Ann-Margret (who guested on the TV show) returns to Bedrock to sing "Viva Rock Vegas" in a montage and over the credits, but her take isn't a patch on the BC-52's version of the theme song in the first one, and indeed the overall feeling of going down a level is everywhere - not just in the plot of Wilma's mum wanting her daughter (a miscast Kristen Johnston) to marry an uppercrust type (Thomas Gibson from "Dharma & Greg"), but from the cast to the visual effects (Rhythm & Hues aren't quite up to Industrial Light & Magic's level) to the music (song-wise, that is; David Newman at least tries), the movie fits in all too well alongside the other losers directed by Brian Levant, he of "Problem Child" and "Jingle All The Way" infamy. And I still think James Belushi, not John Goodman or Mark Addy, IS Fred Flintstone.

At least the first one had Halle Berry and some puns in the credits (though this does have Jane Krakowski - hubba hubba). And no Joan Collins...

"The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas" is one of the poorest excuses for a family film I've seen in a long time.

The original remake with John Goodman was at least decent, but this flop has not only an awful cast, but awful dialogue, filming techniques, jokes...it's straight out of a made-for-TV sequel. Only one thing: It's even worse.

In this live-action prequel to the 1994 comedy hit, Fred Flintstone (Mark Addy) and wife Wilma (Kristen Johnston) go to Rock Vegas along with the Rubbles, Barney (Stephen Baldwin) and Betty (Jane Krakowski), where Wilma is pursued by playboy Chip Rockefeller (Thomas Gibson). This is the setup for a bunch of tiring gags that also have to do with a little green space alien coming to earth to see how humans mate, or something as such.

This has to be one of the worst comedies I've seen it a while. It was actually painful for me to watch. There really are no redeeming values whatsoever, and I don't think I'd like it even if I was a five-year-old. It treats the audience like dirt, and it obviously seeing if there's any juice left in the audience to pay for another "Flintstone" flick.

Instead of trying to improve upon the first film--which was a bit underrated--this film seems to go for the bare minimum in an effort only to draw money from the audience. I have to ask myself, if they knew the first was so critically-declaimed, why release another awful flick? Try to improve and get good reviews.

But nope, no luck here. Instead we are treated to a truly awful and hard-to-watch comedy with no redeeming values whatsoever.

Avoid at all costs.

0.5/5 stars--

John Ulmer

This movie makes an awkward attempt to stay faithful to the spirit of the cartoon. It has moments, but far too few of them.

The few things done right first: Jane Krakowski makes a wonderful Betty; why couldn't she have been in the first movie? She makes the silly dialog somehow sweet and fun. The dating sequence is cute and the Vegas arrival scene has some clever sight gags, but these were fleeting montages. Harvey Korman is wasted in a throw-away role with few lines; instead of voicing Gazoo (as he did in the original cartoon), and the guy they use for Gazoo sounds like slate grinding on bedrock.

Joan Collins is obnoxious enough on her own; this movie has her play a wrenching stereotypical loudmouth mother-in-law who you want to feed to the nearest T-Rex you can find. And the guy that plays Barney? What the heck is he doing? His entire performance looked like a rejected audition for a junior high school production of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure in Jurassic Park." Fred? The guy had a voice almost as nasally as Joan Collins. Wilma is cast as a 7-foot-tall giraffe. Fred goes gambling: Gee, what's gonna happen there? Fred and Barney dress up as dancers: they even manage to ruin this classic comedy routine. A poorly done triangle story falls flat.

This petrified fossil of a film does little justice to the Modern Stone-Aged Family. Rent some of the original cartoons, instead.