Fritz The Cat Film Review

 

Animation fans you've seen me review a ton of kids animated films in the past and you'll see me cover a ton more in the future. However today your going to see me do the opposite and cover two very different but very mature adult animated films and well as you can see by the above picture i'm starting of with a film made by the master of adult animated films Ralph Bakshi and so join me as I review his feature film debut "Fritz The Cat" enjoy.

Now usually this would be a bad thing but this film really doesn't have a plot to speak of and while that would be a bad thing in most films in this case I feel that not having a plot works to the films advantage. Since having a plot would get in the way of the films satire and jokes but I won't lie the film would have been a little bit better if it did have a story to tell since that's movie making 101 in my opinion.

Starring in the film is Skip Hinnant as Fritz the Cat , Rosetta LeNoire as Big Bertha and Additional voices and John McCurry as Blue and John. Also starring in the film is Judy Engles as Winston Schwartz and The Lizard Leader , Phil Seuling as Pig Cop #2 and Additional voices , Director and writer Ralph Bakshi as Pig Cop #1 / Narrator , Mary Dean as Sorority Girls and Harriet and Charles Spidar as Bar Patron and Duke the Crow.

I have to admit that the acting in the film was alot better then what I thought it was going to be but the issue is it's not as good as it perhaps could have been. I say that because the material that the actors are given allows them to give a solid performance and yet for some strange reason they chose to give just OK performances which for a bad film would be a good thing but for a film this good is a pretty bad thing.

Now I cannot find who did the animation for the film but I know that it was done by Ralph Bakshi's animation studio. The animation in the film is so much better then it really had any right to be which makes sense since this was the studios first full length feature film and so of course there going to put there best foot forward for this film but that said there a few repeated animations which I did find pretty distracting.

Honestly the creation behind the film is lot more interesting then the actual film because the character of Fritz is a comic strip character and so Ralph Bakshi had to go and get the rights. Which so far is pretty normal however Fritz's creator Robert Crumb is known for being very hard to work with and even tho he was excited about the prospect of the film he wouldn't sign the contract giving Bakshi the rights to the character and even after his wife signed the contract he would still cause problems for the production.

Like I said this film is based on the comic strip of the exact same name by Robert Crumb with the character first appearing in Help Magazine in January 1965 and ending in The People's Comics in September 1972. The character really had a short life span when it comes to the comic strip having only lasted seven years and indeed the only reason the strip ended is because Robert Crumb hated this film and so had the character be killed off.

I really cannot say who is in the right here since i've only heard one side of this story and that came from Ralph Bakshi. As such I cant really say whose in the right here because even tho there are accounts of Crumb being hard to work with Bakshi himself is known for being pretty crazy so this could very well be a case of two people who should never have met being forced to meet each other or someone is telling the truth.

One of the things that this film is known for is it's satire and I have to say that it's satire while it might be lost on some people is one of the best things in the whole film. Hell i'd say that due to it's satire and everything that's going on in the world right now this film is more important and relevant then it ever was and without this film and it's satire we wouldn't have shows like The Simpsons or South Park that's how influential this film and it's satire is.

This film is an hour and eighteen minuets long which for a film that's very light on plot is a bit to long for my liking. If your going to have a film this long then there needs to be a story worth telling since then we would have a reason to care about the character and the changes that he goes through as such there is no reason to care about anything that's going on it's just stuff happening for no reason which at times makes the film feel boring to watch.

Now then boys and girls since this is comedy that does mean that we have to talk about the jokes that are in the film. While there aren't that many typical jokes in the film alot of the film's humour comes from it's satire or character designs like having all the police in the film be portrayed by Pigs for example don't get me wrong there are a few funny lines here and there but there's not many and that's good because the satire is all that's needed to get the laughs in my opinion.

Overall this is a truly good film and it's one that like I said I feel is more relevant today then it was when it first came out. That said not only would this film not be made today due to it's content it's also a film that has it's fair share of faults and those faults are kind of hard to ignore in some cases as such this film gets a 7 out of 10 from me and all the images that I used were gathered from either Wikipedia or Google Images and it doesn't matter which website you guys use because the quality of the image is the exact same on both websites.