Death to Williams!

n the miserable Death to Smoochy, Robin Williams plays a gutter-talking, over-written former children's television show host trying to get his old job back. Every attempt at humor in the Danny DeVito-directed mess is played twice as loud as it needs to be and made three times as obvious. The results are bad jokes that are so powerful they mute the general comedic talents of Williams, the usually enjoyable Catherine Keener and the otherwise funny (for his honesty) Edward Norton.

The script wants to play on your hatred of that purple dinosaur character that dominated children's television for the middle part of the 90s. The problem is, the script plays on your hatred for something that died out in the middle part of the 90s. DeVito presses on into territory so familiar that absolute boredom and total predictability are too mild to describe adequately.

As a whole, the film is an interesting metaphor for Williams--who, according to rumor, is trying to regain his image as a potty-mouthed comedian. Although he certainly gets his fill of low-brow humor as the host, the old Williams, who would arrive coked-up at the Met and recorded arguably the greatest comedy album of the 1980s, didn't need vulgarity--his descriptive speech and ability to assume a character were what drove the comedy. In Smoochy, all he has going is a string of expletives that are devoid of meaning.

If DeVito wants to make something funny about revenge and crime, he should look at what he has been starring in--Get Shorty or Heist--and realize that the real masters do dark comedy with understatement--not with Robin Williams.