I know prequels are always divisive, but I’m usually willing to give them a shot. When I revisited THE FLINTSTONES for my summer of ’94 retrospective, I decided it was time to finally found out how it all began. Then I waited two years. But now I have watched it.

THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS comes from the same director as the original, Brian Levant (PROBLEM CHILD 2), but not until six years later, with almost an entirely new cast. According to a 2024 SyFy.com article, Universal wanted to film two sequels back-to-back, but John Goodman didn’t want to do another one. Levant theorized, “I think it came down to one thing: people coming up to him in airports and going ‘Yabba-dabba-doo!’ He didn’t like it.”

So they made it a prequel about the characters entering adulthood, but oddly they didn’t cast people who look that age, so it doesn’t really feel like a good explanation for the recast. These actors are in fact younger, but I’m afraid the main difference between John Goodman at 42 and Mark Addy (JACK FROST) at 36 is not their ages. Addy does fine, and Kristen Johnston (AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME) is pretty good as Wilma (is it weird that she reminded me of Emma Stone here?). Stephen Baldwin (POSSE) is definitely not as good as Rick Moranis at playing Barney, but honestly the problem is mainly just that we know he’s Stephen Baldwin and that they let him have ‘90s hair. I can’t honestly say he’s bad in it.

The one casting that I think is an unqualified upgrade is Jane Krakowski (NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION) as Betty. That’s not a swipe at the unpopular casting of Rosie O’Donnell (the only part 1 cast member to return with a voice cameo, playing an octopus masseuse) but just an acknowledgement that Krakowski has that rare Shelley Duvall/Margot Robbie quality of a heightened cartoon character, a person whose presence somehow captures the physical and spiritual essence of a drawing while adding literal and figurative dimension. (Some of it’s in the eyes, I think.)

She’s also believable as a hot rollerskating drive-in waitress who is open-minded and adventurous enough to say yes when customer Fred asks her out on a date. Yeah, the gimmick is that the future Flintstones and Rubbles meet when they go on a mismatched double date. Credited screenwriters Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont (CAN’T HARDLY WAIT, JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS) and Jim Cash & Jack Epps (TOP GUN, DICK TRACY) obviously knew they needed a sitcom premise, and they went for the one about the rich girl dating the working class guy.

We learn that young Wilma hates her privileged life and dreams of leaving her mansion to mingle with the hoi polloi in Bedrock. Specifically she wants to go bowling, but her friends think she’s joking. There’s a cheesy dude named Chip Rockefeller “of the Mesozoic Rockefellers” (Thomas Gibson, BARCELONA) trying to woo her all the time, and since he’s a rich priss he plays polo on a weird kangaroo dinosaur?

Wilma runs away and meets Betty, who mistakes her for a poor person, and Wilma plays along so that they can become friends and roommates. Her fancypants mom (Joan Collins replacing Elizabeth Taylor) shows up to visit right when she was about to fess up, but the bigger issue is when Fred isn’t accepted by her classist family and friends. He worries that she’ll never marry a guy who works at the rock quarry and lives in a trailer park, so when Chip invites them to the opening of his casino in Rock Vegas Fred plans to win money gambling and buy Wilma an impressive ring. But Chip (who’s really just trying to marry into Wilma’s family fortune) frames him for stealing Wilma’s heirloom pearl necklace.

Betty needs a subplot so she mistakenly thinks she sees Barney feeling a lady’s boobs and then when she gets hit on by rock star Mick Jagged (Alan Cumming, GET CARTER) she starts hanging out with him. Primitive versions of pop culture figures were obviously a Flintstones tradition that needed to be addressed. I don’t blame them. John Taylor from Duran Duran also appears as the bassist, Keith Rockhard.

Jagged is actually Cumming’s secondary role in the movie. His larger contribution is playing The Great Gazoo, the wish-granting alien introduced halfway through the last season of The Flintstones, and considered by some to be when the show “jumped the shark.” (Original Gazoo voice Harvey Korman plays Wilma’s dad here.) VIVA ROCK VEGAS opens with CG reminiscent of MARS ATTACKS! to introduce Gazoo with his people in space. That they find him so annoying they send him on a mission to study earthling mating habits just to get rid of him is a pretty good meta joke about the character. Of course, it’s always weird when these adaptations feel the need to both include a character and say that the character sucks.

In live action he’s still not a fun character, but I do like their way of doing him. It looks like it’s live action of Cumming in makeup for the head and then animation for the tiny body. At first I thought it was a puppet, but the hands sometimes move too well for that. Either way, stylishly goofy.

The best part about setting it in Vegas is that they got Ann-Margret (a celebrity guest on the actual cartoon) to record an eccentric new take on “Viva Las Vegas” for a sightseeing montage. As I’ve mentioned in a review or two I’ve gone on trips to 21st century Las Vegas with friends who like to stay at the Golden Nugget, so I was happy to see it represented as the Molten Nugget.

Since I never saw this before and it wasn’t as pop-culturally dominant as the first one I forgot it was even a theatrical release, but it’s clearly way too expensive not to be. I still enjoy seeing all the sets and props they made to look like cartoon rocks and bones and things: all these cars, a tour bus, the exterior and interior of the Sloghoople mansion, a huge carnival with working ferris wheels and things (plus a rollercoaster running across cg brontosaurus necks and tales), a bowling alley with real monkeys that put the pins in place, multiple casinos and luxury hotels, the list goes on.

One of the “modern technology but really it’s just dinosaurs doing menial tasks” gags is a remote control that has a little pterodactyl that flies out of it to actually do the turning on or off. Even though it’s c.g. it’s done by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. But most of the dinosaurs are puppets, and there are so many of them.

It’s also cool just to see flat painted scenery like this:

I think we can all agree we didn’t need to see how The Flintstones began, but I guess we didn’t need to see any other story about them either. Since it’s a prequel we get their first date, which includes other firsts, like Fred showing Wilma how to bowl (they float on their tip toes in loving slow motion) and winning an egg that hatches into Baby Dino (voiced by Mel Blanc in archival recordings years after his death) and he saves the day by pushing them together for a good night kiss when Fred was only looking for a handshake.

At the end they get married in Vegas, with the officiant holding the Holy Slab, and there’s a huge dance number. It’s weird to see that many people hoofing around barefoot. I wonder how much they had to worry about cleaning their feet between takes?

They truly don’t make movies like this anymore, for bad and good. I’m too old to think of 2000 as a bygone, less enlightened era, so I was a little surprised that there’s a mild gay panic joke after Barney falls on top of Fred in their bunk beds.

I prefer the not problematic innuendo of Wilma reacting orgasmically after they’ve ended their date and Fred’s parting “Yabba-dabba-doo!” causes her apartment to shake.

I guess I can sort of respect that they don’t try to make her into a girl power icon, since that would be so forced. When Wilma and Fred fantasize about owning a house she somehow sees his daydream of coming home to her mowing the lawn, so she frowns and changes it to her preferred dream of him mowing the lawn and she comes out pregnant and gives him lemonade. Yeah, I’m glad that’s what you want, Wilma, because that’s your future!

As in the first one there are glimpses of neanderthals as an underclass in Bedrock, but also it’s noticeable that most of the Black people on screen are in servant type roles. There’s a limo driver, a couple bodyguards, a jazz band playing for mostly white partygoers. I’m not saying it’s all that degrading or anything, just noting that actors can’t escape typecasting even in an entirely manufactured cartoon world of silliness. Interesting.

John Cho has a bit part as a valet driver. This is a few years before BETTER LUCK TOMORROW and HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE, so I guess he was mainly known as “MILF guy #2” in AMERICAN PIE. It is also reportedly Kristen Stewart’s first film, playing “Ring Toss Girl” at the carnival, but it’s uncredited and you can’t see her face, so I don’t know.

THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS did not make back its budget at the box office, it ended the movie franchise, and also got poor reviews and four Razzie nominations. Like so many Razzie nominees it’s really not worth hating; other than having a dinosaur fart joke within the first 5 minutes it’s not particularly bad. It just can’t get past what we learned in the 1994 film, and also in some of the old TV specials: feature length is too long to be mildly amused by this joke. It has many talented professionals working very hard to make it happen, so it still has the novelty surface pleasures of a live action Flintstones. But it’s less novel, since it’s the second time. I guess I don’t regret getting around to it, but I’m not a role model.