A swinging, hypocritical college student cat raises hell in a satirical vision of the 1960s.
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Reviews
Pretty Good
Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
In a weird way, this movie holds a special place in my heart. It was the first film my parents saw when they started dating, not that my mom cared much for it. I'm not a fan of Ralph Bakshi, but I think this is probably the best film he made that I've ever seen. I do appreciate learning about the history of animation, especially the first real adult cartoon that paved the way for future works, even if it's not that particularly well known. So, as strange as this film and as sexual as it gets, I'm going to say I liked it. It's very reflective of the 1960's or early 70's. Two thirds into the movie we're introduced to Fritz's girlfriend. She's probably the most likeable character in the film, if only because I feel sorry for her seeing as how Fritz is so freaking promiscuous. The animation is really nice in this and I appreciate the voice work as well. It definitely brings up some interesting topics and it's unique and honestly it seems to hold up today. The pig cops are easily the funniest characters. But yeah, it's certainly not for all tastes. ***
I decided to watch Fritz the Cat because I'm a fan of R. Crumb's work, and his infamous hatred towards this movie further fueled my intrigue. I think subversive animation inherently titillates the little kid in all of us, taking a widely beloved medium of our childhood and doing very "mature" (at least ratings wise) things with them. Ralph Bakshi, the director, proclaimed that his film was for the young people, the hippie generation, who weren't easily offended and were receptive to new ideas. The question then, however, is if this is true, why does he spend so much time lampooning them? The way this film portrays the radical left of the 60s and 70s is hilariously inaccurate as a whole and more indicative of the "everyone can identify as who they want to" neoliberalism of modern day. The liberals (all females I might add) in this film mainly exist as strawmen for some unspecified demographic to laugh at and think, "wow, liberal girls are so dumb, they literally only think that stuff to pick up guys!" And therein lies the main problem with this film. If you have a problem with the left, fine, but say it in an intelligent way. This movie is supposed to undermine the mainstream view of established groups in society--hippies, cops, blacks--but instead of being clever or profound, it just presents the caricatures to say "HA! AREN'T COPS SO DUMB!" "AREN'T WOMEN SO FICKLE!" It's exhausting and drains the humor out of damn near everything in here. Stereotypes ≠ does not a witty commentary on society make. There is one scene that I thought might have some insightful symbolism if one looked into it enough: Fritz incites a riot in Harlem against the cops. As the military is coming in and Fritz sees all the crows (puerile caricature for every single black person in the movie) around him dying, he essentially shrugs and walks off. Make of that what you will about race relations in the US, but in Fritz, you can pretty much guess the whole point of this scene was to have lots of cartoon violence. After all, the whole appeal of this movie is staying up past your bedtime to watch a naughty cartoon.Which leads me to that infamous X rating. If you're even a casual watcher of Family Guy, Fritz the Cat won't make you blink twice. Heck, if you're a hardcore Family Guy viewer, you'll probably love this film. The entire premise of the humor seems to evolve around anime tiddies, crudely drawn male genitals urinating everywhere, drugs, rape, violence, and stereotypes that aren't so much offensive now as just...tired and groan-worthy. It's ostensibly a parody of free love philosophy, but I'm not buying it. A large part of it might be that this movie is very, very considerably before my time. But it's hard to take this movie as a serious emblem of the counterculture when it treats nothing with respect. All of the women are either vapid, nagging, or whores. Somehow race exists in this animal world, and every thing that isn't white gets its own species. Characters are simultaneously Marxist and avid supporters of domestic violence, pro-revolutionary and Neonazi. The internal world has no consistency and as a result it's a jumbled mess and I feel like I wasted 82 minutes of my life. I guess it would be a deep philosophical commentary on something if literally anything, anything at all, about this film at least tried to be mature in tone at any point? Man, we get it, the 60s were strange, dude. Didn't need to watch an unfunny movie to glean that. I may sound scathing, but there are two things that may redeem this movie to people who care more than me. The animation in this movie is faithful to the eclectic style of Crumb and has stunningly innovative moments that would be poetic if the surrounding film wasn't...well, crap. The music is also really good, and sadly more fun than anything else in the movie. Fritz the Cat is probably worth watching if you're an animated historian or avid hentai fan. Other than that, though, there are better relics from the 70s that are faithful to the time period and actually funny, too.
I was in college when this film was released. There was lots of talk of this racy animated film. Apparently, it had it's foundation in an underground comic strip. Because I was never really ingrained in the counterculture (though I supported much of what they were doing), I didn't understand some of the issues very well. Having seen it a couple times as an adult, I know that it must have been groundbreaking for its content and its portrayals of various stereotypical beings, pigs as cops, crows as blacks, and so on. The problem for me is that I found it disjointed and, I'm sorry to say, pretty boring. The last time I watched it I sort of wondered what all the fuss was about. I suppose it has to do with an "anything goes" culture we live in now. Nevertheless, it is an interesting period piece, representing a turbulent time.
I just seen Mr. Enter review Fraidy Cat. Here is another cat cartoon, and it's a movie about Fritz the Cat. Fritz are looking back on the lives in the 1960's. The movie contains lots of violence, drugs and naughtiness. Also a lot of strange humor. So, don't go for any Oscar nomination here. Just enjoy the weirdness. These who were old enough to watch X rated movies back then might get the jokes better. The animation and music is really early 1970s back when I was a kid. If you love old school animation, the different styles of art cinema or obscure 1960s and 1970s movies I can recommend this. 10/10