Hey Good Lookin'
October. 01,1982 RAn outrageous, affectionate look at coming of age in the Eisenhower era in Brooklyn.
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Reviews
Good movie but grossly overrated
Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay
Absolutely the worst movie.
I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
This film is complete garbage. None of the characters are interesting, the dialogue cannot be understood, and the storyline is so weak. The main character, Vinny is a bit of a tool and I've noticed similarities between him and Danny Zuko from Grease. This could mean that Hey Good Lookin' supposedly ripped off Grease, that would explain why many people hate this film.Vinny, now that I've compared him to Danny Vuto, that led me thinking about how John Travolta played Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. Yep, and Vincent could be Vincent's real name, but everyone in the film refers to him as "Vinny." Despite that Pulp Fiction was released 12 years later than Hey Good Lookin', Vinny is more like Danny Vuto, due to the fact that he picks up chicks, has a cocky personality, and is portrayed as a greaser, as well as Grease being released prior to Hey Good Lookin'.The dialogue is somehow entertaining in certain parts of the film, but mostly involves lots of yelling, cheering and reactions to things. We see typical conversations in this film, but they're about random things that don't really pertain to what's going on in the film. After watching the first ten minutes of the film, the dialogue gets boring and loud, sounding like a Looney Tunes cartoon. And did I mention that Warner Bros. distributed this film? Despite that this film is considered terrible by many, we come across another positive aspect of this film. How this film began production. The slippery slope of how the producers dealt with marketing this film started when Ralph Bakshi started writing the script for this film, after producing Coonskin. This resulted in Warner Bros. trying to cash in on the film. Many black animators were informed about this becoming a film, so they joined Ralph Bakshi's studio and contributed on this film. Once they realized how the black characters in the film were given mainstream African American stereotypes, the black animators left the studio; supposedly as a response to how Bakshi avoided giving blacks stereotypes in Coonskin, but exploiting the stereotypes negatively and crossing the line in Hey Good Lookin'.The film contains live action footage that blended the animated characters with the backgrounds used for the film. In one scene, the black characters break dance, despite the fact that break dancing wasn't popular to the release of this film. This film perfected the dance style and this dance became popular among African Americans in hip hop culture.Since Bakshi wanted the break dancing scenes in the film, a lot of the live action footage was deleted and reshot. Bakshi was capable of rotoscoping the break dancing scenes, but couldn't on some of the scenes that were reshot due to budget issues. The film was then shelved until the release of American Pop, and despite that Warner Bros. wanted this film to be a success, it didn't do too well.If the film is so bad, then yes, the music is also horrible and is rare to find. This film only became a film because Warner Bros. was fascinated with Bakshi's script, yet I personally find it uninteresting. The music is cheesy, and pretty much exploits the lifestyle the characters live in. The music attempts to be 50s music but sounds more like 80s music, the type of music this film has is like the 80s version of Nickelback. It only gets negative reviews. The character Crazy has the stupidest name in the film. Naming him Kangaroo would've been better, because it isn't too obvious that his personality is like a kangaroo's. Crazy is clearly really clumsy and goofy and the fact that his name is Crazy makes us know that the film will be boring.The animation is good, and is supposed to be a representation of Coney Island. However, there's this one scene where Vinny feels something in the sand and digs up a disturbing skull that petrifies the women at the beach. And what was their reaction to it? Well, I don't care, because this is frankly an unwatchable film.
You either love, loathe or simply don't understand Bakshi's films. I personally fall into the first category and this was the film that started it all for me at the tender age of 12. It still remains my favourite 15 years later. Me and a friend of mine were obsessed with it and would quote it to each other (and others who must have wondered what the hell we were on about) constantly.I love Bakshi's animation, it maybe rough and sketchy at times but this is part of the appeal. It's far more organic than some pristine computer generated Disney schmaltz or his rotoscoped films. He has a wonderfully unique way of capturing characters in his art. 98% of people in his world are ugly. Though usually with a couple of exceptions. The love interest Rozzie, for example may well be the very ideal of a red blooded males fantasy, forget Jessica Rabbit! The dialogue (as in all his earlier pics) is wonderfully un-coached and at times sounds very improvised. It's drops a lot of the psycadelic and pseudo 60's philosophy that inhabited "Fritz the cat" and "Heavy traffic". There is also less of his trademark mixing of animation over live action backgrounds although it's still present to good effect in certain scenes. In a sense, it's perhaps more streamlined and consequently more accessible to new comers to the world of Bakshi than his previous works. What really makes the film for me though is Ric Sandlers superb soundtrack which (probably due to the films lack of anything beyond extreme cult success) has never been released. I implore those of you who feel the same to email him and tell so because I personally know (from experience) this music does still exist. And with enough interest it could see a release.Playin' To Win9 Out of 10
Man alive -- this movie, aside from being in poor taste and unfunny (the poor taste would be fine if it were funny -- but its not), just doesn't go anywhere. I mean its shocking how parts don't even seem to make sense. The scene progression is just sloppy -- and the characters are just miserable and annoying.
O.K. I am a big fan of cartoon movies. with live footage. This one gets goofy in some spots but very watchable.. get it on video, and give it a good chance.