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 organized crime while commenting on rampant corporatization and the prioritization of dollars over ethics.

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The story spirals around two kids’ TV hosts: Williams’ Randolph Smiley AKA “Rainbow Randolph” and his replacement, Sheldon Mopes AKA “Smoochy the Rhino” (Edward Norton). We see Randolph on the set of his show, where he bounces around in a preposterously shiny suit and sings a cheesy ditty about how “friends come in all sizes”.

But away from the cameras this guy is a dirtbag. Randolph accepts a briefcase of cash from parents, who are bribing him to get their “little booger eater” (his words) on to the set. He’s then arrested by the feds and his show is cancelled, leaving him disgraced and the network badly rattled. These scenes could have occupied an entire first act but DeVito packs them into a few spritzy minutes, indicating a film that won’t take the audience’s attention for granted and smashes forward with a wild pep in its step.

At the network, the TV executive Marion Frank Stokes (Jon Stewart) is grilled by his bosses, who instruct him to find somebody “squeaky fucking clean” to avert another PR disaster. Stokes and his producer colleague Nora Wells (Catherine Keener) search hard and arrive somewhere people go to get clean: a rehab clinic where Mopes performs on a regular basis, belting out such lyrics as “Oh we’ll get you off that smack oh yes we will!” to an audience of bleary-eyed junkies.

Wells, who is erotically drawn to children’s entertainers (yes, this movie’s weird), is skeptical that Mopes is as proper as he seems. But all the signs look good: he’s a vegetarian who crusades against unhealthy foods, delivers episodes with thoroughly wholesome lessons and refuses to bow to pressure to stage large commercial events – which earns him dangerous enemies. But none more dangerous than “Rainbow Fucking Randolph” (his words, again), who declares war against Mopes and desperately attempts to ruin his career via a sensational series of escalating pranks – a veritable revenge-o-rama. One involves penis-shaped cookies he smuggles on to Smoochy’s set; another a Nazi rally he tricks Mopes into performing at.

The comedy is not for all tastes. I’m not sure what loving this film so much says about me; on the other hand, I’m mystified that others can watch the film and not find it hysterically entertaining. DeVito has directed some fine comedies, including his Roald Dahl adaptation Matilda and the ferocious battle-of-the-sexes film The War of the Roses, but never one sharper or wilier than this.

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Williams is a wickedly berserk villain who is cranked to 11, 12, 13. He’s brilliantly entertaining as an emotional rollercoaster of a man spinning wildly out of control, injecting the kind of manic energy only Williams could bring. Like a baby, Randolph tumbles between highs and lows, projecting joy and laughter one moment then crushing despair and tears the next. Norton is a perfect foil, playing somebody who is thoroughly and perhaps sanctimoniously decent: the perennial goody two-shoes, with a repertoire of amusingly didactic songs including one with the chorus “My stepdad’s not mean, he’s just adjusting”.

When I think about these characters, which I do perhaps too often, I imagine them dancing and singing together on a gaudily colourful set spinning around in the clouds. Up there, waiting to be properly discovered and appreciated. Long live Rainbow and the Rhino!

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