Word: bakshis
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Directed and Written by RALPH BAKSHI...
...movie is thus indebted less to Disney than to underground cartoonists like R. Crumb. Director-Writer Bakshi, in fact, was responsible for the lamentable Fritz the Cat, a feature-length film about one of Crumb's most famous creations without any of Crumb's clout...
Animation lets Bakshi run free with arresting fantasies. When Mama and Papa battle, Papa lays Mama out with a haymaker; Mama hurls a meat cleaver that catches Papa right in the crotch...
When the shock wears off, a few questions remain. Urban desperation is a familiar subject by now, and Bakshi's private fantasies may be more startling than original. The film is a grab bag of drawing styles and animation techniques, some used once, then discarded, others used scattershot throughout, giving the whole picture the chaotic consistency of an experimental sketchbook...
Although none of the visual ideas are new, some, like painting characters onto old movie footage, are still striking. Others are ostentatious. Michael, the Bakshi surrogate, is drawn with a cheap storybook realism while everyone else is grotesque. The hero looks like Snow White among the Seven Dwarfs, the kind of narcissism the movie not only indulges, but stresses. ∎ Jay Cocks...