THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE

year: 1967 rating: ***

Fred Flintstone, that lovable blue-collar caveman from Bedrock, becomes a spy in this feature length cartoon: Hanna Barbara’s farewell to the six season television series...

Begins with a fantastic mountainside car chase involving two goons and a suave James Bond-like spy, Rock Slag, who looks exactly like Fred. The chase results in Rock being injured...

Cut to Fred and his marble-eyed sidekick Barney taking a failed shortcut home. They wind up at the hospital where Fred’s given an assignment to replace his double: The Flintstones and Rubbles go on a European trip where Fred learns of a nefarious criminal, The Grey Goose, and his plot to blow up the world.

Loads of fun action – mostly involving those two thugs attempting to kill Fred. But when various musical numbers are thrown in… the worst concerning a hippie-dippy "progression" of children that has nothing to do with the plot or characters… what begins as a clever spoof gets derailed. But the good stuff returns with a chase through an abandoned theme park: including a nod to Orson Welles's LADY FROM SHANGHAI fun house: What would have made a great hour-long two-part episode, sans the musical interludes, winds up a flawed Flintstone journey – yet even the bad parts are creatively bizarre... it was 1966, after all.