Word: bakshi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first half of the movie drags and jerks along, as Bakshi introduces characters without sub-stantiating their dialogue. An orthodox rabbi, singing Hebrew, is murdered by Cossacksin Russia; his son Zalmie immigrates to America, hanging out in smoky vaudeville dance halls, entranced by the grotesque bodies of showgirls. He grows up fast, losing his virginity in a dressing room after a mock strip tease. Trying to appear tender and symbolic, Bakshi never fleshes out the people enough to make them more than the cartoons they...
...FILM'S FIRST HALF contrives, the second lies and confuses. The most prominent fault lies in the skipping of the 50s, the decade in which blues and r&b spawned rock and roll. Bakshi's chronology jumps from World War II to Greenwich Village poet-beatniks, but misses a beat--the beat...
Tony, Benny's son (the bildungs roman continues), travels across the country, stopping briefly in Kansas and seducing a young blond waitress in the cornfields by telling her, "This country is my Cracker Jack Box, and you're my prize," in typical Bakshi Americana style...
This historical inaccuracies might be forgiven in view of the scope of Bakshi's project, but it seems crucial that the people over 30 in the audience (if there are any, given the ad campaign) get a clearer picture of sixties music...
...Bakshi also condemns the use of drugs without delving into the pressures which cause their use. The band plays in Kansas, and, what do you know, a kid who visits backstage turns out to be Tony's (from that first backstage tryst). Tony suffers a series of painful flashbacks that seem to assert: "Oh, why did I go across the country and take all those drugs when I could have stayed, married, and washed dishes all my life? This attitude is so antithetical to the adventuresome spirit of pop music one wonders why Bakshi even bothered...