I Watch Films: The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas

 

The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas

A prequel to The Flintstones. The Great Gazoo (Alan Cumming), an alien, is sent to Earth to find out about human mating rituals. Only Fred Flintstone, a bachelor newly hired by Slate And Company as a Bronto-crane operator can see him. He and his best friend Barney Rubble, out of school and on their first jobs, are also looking for women.

Enter Wilma Slaghoople, daughter of a Colonel, who lives in high society above the stone age town of Bedrock. Her mother Pearl wants her to marry wealthy casino owner Chip Rockefeller, but Wilma doesn’t, so she runs away. She meets Betty O’Shale, a waitress at Bronto-burger; not having any money Betty assumes she is “caveless” and takes her in, getting her a job as a waitress. At Bronto-burger they meet Fred and Barney who are struck by them; they go to a carnival on a double-date. The dates are going poorly despite The Great Gazoo’s assistance until they swap, creating the canonical pairings of Fred and Wilma and Barney and Betty.

Wilma takes them back to her home for a birthday party. Inevitably her friends make mistakes, and in turn are shocked at the wealth. After they embarrass themselves and are insulted Wilma and her friends leaves. Chip comes up with a plan, apologises, and invites the four to his new casino resort Rock Vegas. Fred tries to win money so he can be rich for Wilma. It turns out that Chip owes money to some shady characters; he explains to them that when he marries Wilma and gets the Slaghoople fortune he can pay them back. With Fred at the tables he distracts Barney and Betty by sending his girlfriend Roxie to flirt with Barney while he woos Wilma. Then Chip frames Fred for stealing Wilma’s pearls, and Fred and Barney are locked up. The Great Gazoo overhears Chip’s plans, tells Fred and Barney who escape for a complicated music-themed finale.

All round an inferior prequel to The Flintstones, the live action cartoon has lost it’s novelty and isn’t as good, the two or three good Flintstone jokes have been done to death. Somehow the high society seems even more discordant than the other things transplanted, maybe because it’s already a ridiculous and satirical version of it before it’s been stone aged. And how is Chip losing money when not only does he own a casino, we see that it’s fixed?

Watch This: Sporadically funny cartoon adaption
Don’t Watch This: It has the Great Gazoo in it