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 This is director Ralph Bakshi's first movie and it is based on Robert Crumb's
"legendary character". Fritz is into embracing "every experimental experience
that crosses his path". He has orgies, hangs out in Harlem, and eventually
ends up joining a "group of radically aggressive hippies". His new associations
could "cost him his life!" 1972, 79 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
You know, I sure am that glad that I was over in the Nam smoking some good
reefer and commie ass when this cartoon came out in 1972. This thing
apparently caused a little commotion when released because it was a cartoon and
*gasp* x-rated. Err, I guess this was the era that produced other hardcore
x-rated fare like Midnight Cowboy, but I can't help but wonder which group of
people were lamer - the ones that made this thing and thought they were
actually involved in an important project or the ones that were all outraged by
it. If Whitey really watched this movie and paid attention to what was going
on in it, they would have loved it. After all, it pointed out everything wrong
and hypocritical with those hippie dirtbags that spit on me when I came back
from killing babies. This shouldn't be construed as praise for this film
though, because
even though it showed us that these self-absorbed college jerks were really
just interested in getting laid and getting high (but only as a means to get
laid
again), it's never been terribly interesting to watch junkie scum try to score
some hooch. Really, if you want to see a good movie about kids trying to pop
their cherries (can I say that?) just go rent that Porky's movie. Tell me that you won't remember Pee-Wee, Meat, and the rest of the
gang of Angel Beach long after you've forgotten Fritz the Cat and, uh, well,
there was, uh, let's see, a blue aardvark or something. See, it turns out that
the novelty of watching cartoon characters *gasp* take drugs and *gasp* have
sex wears off after about ten minutes or so. Those dolts must have thought
they were living in the end times when this thing came out. We're a lot
tougher nowadays as big time movie studios release South Park movies, Jackass, and anything Brian De Palma coughs up. And for the degenerates out there
that have to have their cartoons full of nasty stuff, you have a friend in the
Japanese with all their filthy kiddie porn cartoons. When is this Ashcroft wimp
going to acknowledge that this war on terrorism includes hentai? Come on man,
we're falling behind in this culture war!  Luckily for these purveyors of filth, I have already done my stint with Uncle
Sam in protecting our country from all the varmints out there that would seek to
destroy our way of life by exposing our kids to animated genitals, but I still
have the power of the pen to wage this ultimate battle of good versus Satan. I
think the most telling thing of all with this movie is that the kindly
cartoonist who created this beloved Fritz the Cat, who no doubt engaged in
whacky, yet wholesome adventures (I never read any of his comics, since I was
more of an Archie fan, but I never saw them on the rack with Arch, so I assumed
they just sold really fast) hated the movie. Supposedly (and I just know what
I read on the internet, so you can pretty much take it as gospel) his wife had
power of attorney and went ahead and authorized Fritz's use for this movie and
its sequel over creator Robert Crumb's objections. Completely distraught with
the filthy things they made his tabby do (Fritz would never incite a race riot
or hump three girls in a bathtub!) he had no choice but kill off Fritz in one
of his comics. How can Ralph Bakshi live with himself, knowing that he is
responsible for driving such a gentle and family-friendly comic book guy like
Crumb to do the unthinkable? Sadly, it probably isn't too hard for Bakshi to
carry this burden around with him, since he also made the sword and sorcery
bomb Fire And Ice and isn't visibly bothered by that. I don't know what happened to Crumb after
he killed off Fritz, but I'm assuming he caught on with Disney or something and
helped them out with stuff like Beauty And The Beast and DuckTales. I think there was actually a documentary made about Crumb several years back
that undoubtedly told you the inspiring and ultimately uplifting story of his
life before and after the liberal filmmakers ruined his most famous character.
I haven't actually seen it, but it sounds like something you should sit the
kids in front of while you are out mowing the yard or something.  Fritz is a student at NYU, though like most of these pampered college kids,
they never actually go to class, but even if they did, they'd just have those
left-wing professors feeding them that anti-American, anti-Christian crap these
pinko infested campuses are bastions for. When is W. going to get a resolution
from the U.N. that allows him to go into Berkeley and clean out the Al Qaeda
rabble? Now Fritz heads to the park with his guitar and and a couple of
buddies and is distraught to find a ton of other like-minded animals there. He
and his friends complain about all the posers and agree that they must be all
high school kids or something. Fritz and his band only go into action when
some big-bootied gals wander by, showing us that they are truly aspiring rock
stars. Eventually, he discovers that the lay-dees flock to a crow (they play
the black folks in this movie) and try to impress him with all their white
guilt and classes they're taking in African studies. He blows them off, giving
the enterprising Fritz his opening. He lets loose with a torrent of babble
about how his soul hurts and he's on a quest for meaning and why ask why and
all the other great intellectual challenges that have fueled hours of upper
middle class faux-conversations for years. This reminds of my own community
college days. I used to have a roommate from Arkansas. He was a midget who
liked to sleep in the nude and always talked about how he went to the same
undergrad school as Green Bay Packer great Bret Favre (University of Southern
Mississippi for those keeping track of such things). He was a little horny
toad who always managed to get these ugly, younger girls to come up to his room
and would babble with them about stuff in an effort to pump them. I never
heard any of these conversations because I was out at night kicking it old
school at the various step shows I was famous for winning, but one day I heard
one of his nasty looking broads say "I could sit here and have intelligent
conversations all night long". Me and my buddy were laughing so hard, because
we knew she was only moments away from being groped by a hobbit.
Interestingly, this midget ended up dating a really ugly girl that looked as
old as his mother must have been. But the only thing you really need to
remember about this guy is that when he moved out, the bed sheet upon which his
hairy naked misshapen shape had rested for an entire semester, had a filthy
outline of
his body. It was a kind of white trash Shroud of Turin, but there was no
question as to its authenticity. Not sure what any of this has to do with Fritz The Cat, but I'd wager it's a might more interesting.  Anyways, after Fritz tricks these dumb chicks into going back to someplace so
they can search for some universal truth (Have you checked my pants? No,
really, go ahead, I think it's down there.) he ends up doing some drugs and
having an orgy with these women and then the cops show up to bust some heads.
The cops are literally pigs! Egads! The social commentary in this movie is so
obvious, it's as painful as living with a horny midget from Arkansas! They
bust up the party, but Fritz who is high, steals one of their guns and shoots
up a
toilet. This was after he had gotten out of the toilet where he had been
hiding by the way. Fritz becomes a fugitive and we are treated to a long scene
of pure tedium as Fritz hides out at a synagogue. Fritz finds his way to a bar
inhabited by crows and he hooks up with a pool player there and they end up
leaving together and stealing a car. His new friend takes him to someplace
where they score some joints and he ends up on a booty call with one of the
crows. It was while watching him trying to take a bite out of either her
breast or ass that I was thinking that Bob Barker was right when he implored
all of us to have our pets either spayed or neutered (probably ought to do both
with Fritz just to be on the safe side). So Fritz is doing his bit to bridge
the
racial divide in this country by screwing this crow in an old abandoned bus when
he finally realizes what his part in things should be. He goes back to the
hood and announces to every crow in earshot that they should throw off the
chains of the masters and revolt. The pigs arrive and one of them gets a
bottle in the eye and it is ON! Race riot! Fritz sort of disappears during
all this, hiding around a corner as the cops roll in and the US Air Force
starts dropping napalm on the hood in an effort to put down the riots. His pal
from the pool hall gets shoot and his death is one of the stronger moments in
the movie, very messy and nasty, intercut with shots of pool balls dropping
into their holes until the last one falls and the crow croaks. Not sure what
it all meant, but it looked cool. As for Fritz, he hooks up with an old girlfriend named Winston and they head
out to
the coast. In hippie parlance, this is known as "buggin' out". Fritz is going
there to find out "where it's at" or something. If this movie was good for
something other than watching cartoon characters behave like cast members ofThe Real World, it was for refreshing myself on hippiespeak. What's your bag, man?
Anyway, Fritz gets tired of Winston being a drag and leaves her in the desert
and finds new friends in the blue stoner Nazi biker rabbit and his horse-faced
girlfriend. This is where Fritz gets embroiled in a revolutionary plot to blow
up a power plant. Just before the dynamite goes off next to Fritz at the plant,
he realizes the love is where it's at, but it's too late and he gets blown to
smithereens. But he survives and ends up under police guard at the hospital
and gets visited by several of his ladies and ends up showing them what he's
learned about the world (Everything I ever learned about the world is right
here in my pants, baby!). The animation in this movie is quite good and very
pleasant to look at, especially on this widescreen DVD, but I would say that
the movie
is good only in that it makes these traitor hippies out to be the
druggie-scum-looking-to-get-laid-by-vapid-women that they are. You could say
that the movie didn't date well and
that it shows the stretch marks of age, but I'm not sure there is much here
that actually dates it. After all, we still have all the problems between the
races, liberal apologists for it, guys who start rock bands to get chicks,
druggie bikers, and idiots who want to blow stuff up to make some obscure
political point about how America sucks. Any value the movie had from an
"outrage" standpoint is long since gone and it doesn't seem rude as the back of
the DVD box suggests so much as it's a relic of a time when people were shocked
by
cartoon cats that cussed. Heck I got stepkids in kindergarten that do that.
If the movie's point was to puncture the self-importance of the hippie culture,
it did do a good job of that, but I think by now we all realize that that was a
collection of spoiled rich kids (these losers are now called Baby Boomers) who
weren't interested in anything except pretending to be smart and getting their
kicks. I ain't no fan of the kids today, what with all their gloomy antics and
skateboarding all over, but anyone that complains about them not being as
"aware" as their tie-dyed ancestors, needs to realize that they are exactly the
same as the hippies, just like every generation before and ever after will be.
They're looking to spread their wings, find their own way, get shitfaced and
bang as much booty as their roofies will allow them to. And did I really need a
cartoon to tell me that?
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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