Fritz the Cat was R. Crumb's cartoon which depicted the titular character being a part of the 60's movement. He drops out of college in the beginning, joins the underground, smokes a lot of weed and fucks a lot of girls, joins the black underground, starts a race riot, and then kinda gets betrayed by it. The plot is secondary though to the weird nothingness, commentary, political idealism, and sexuality ever present in Crumb's cartooning.
What to say, first of all, the movie is super sexual, and funny in that way at least. Sometimes it misses the mark, but overall it is consistently funny and definitely weird. The animation is good, and this was the first Ralph Bakshi film. He wanted to produce something alternative to Disney and this is most definitely alternative.
This is one of those movies you kinda have to see for yourself. It's progressive and a product of it's time, but feels sort of unclear about any point it's trying to make or message it conveys. It feels like it both celebrates and admonishes certain things about the liberal agenda, and it's dated look at black culture must've even been offensive at the time. I know that Blaxploitation was going strong, but still. The film lacks a lot in the way of charm, but it has to be cited as the source for essentially all crazy animation and adult animation ever to come since.
I guess I liked this, but probably not as much as I could have. 3 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment