The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas

by Tom Meek

The first live-action treatment of the popular 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon was largely bland and uninspired. At least in this sequel (which is really a prequel) there are a few snappy plot conventions. Viva Rock Vegas spins through the prehistory of the Flintstone clan, namely the wooing of Wilma (Kristen Johnston) and Betty (Jane Krakowski from Ally McBeal) by those infamous blue-collar Neanderthals Fred (Mark Addy) and Barney (Stephen Baldwin). Who would have guessed that Fred asked out Betty before she married Barney, or that Wilma was a socialite slumming in Bedrock?

The stop-and-guffaw plot, which bounces the principals from Bedrock to Rock Vegas, unfurls pedantically. The dino-FX are impressive but don't wow. It's Dino, as a pint-sized, purple pup with a dinosaurian reservoir of hyperactivity, who's the scene stealer. Plus, Joan Collins (does she ever age?) is elegantly haughty as Wilma's manipulative mother, Thomas Gibson (of Dharma & Greg fame) is equally smug as Rock Vegas philanderer Chip Rockefeller, and the always affable Alan Cumming pulls double duty as bubble-headed space alien Gazoo and Mick Jagged, the swanky rock star who wants Betty for a groupie. At Cinema World, Entertainment Cinemas, Framingham, Gardner, the Hoyt Dayville, the Hoyt Westborough, Leominster, the Solomon Pond Hoyt, White City, and the Worcester North Showcase.