High among the underappreciated delights in the career of the great flibbertigibbet Robin Williams is the gleefully twisted 2002 film Death to Smoochy, a blacker-than-black satire of the children’s TV industry that’s never received proper kudos. Time to correct the record: I’ve seen this devilishly sassy and laugh-out-loud film a handful of times and always look forward to another rewatch.
Its director, Danny DeVito, and screenwriter, Adam Resnick, take what should be a scrupulously moral and clean industry and apply awfully adult concepts to it, injecting subplots involving revenge and organised crime while commenting on rampant corporatisation and the prioritisation of dollars over ethics.
