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| Fritz the Cat (1972) |
I'll say right off the bat that I'm not too familiar with the Fritz the Cat comics, in that I didn't know they were a thing until looking them up for the purposes of this review. From my limited research, the movie seems to follow the events of the comic pretty faithfully, but the original creator, Robert Crumb, didn't seem to like this movie all that much. Maybe it's just because I haven't familiarised myself with the source material enough to properly make that call, but I don't know. It seemed pretty true to the comics to me. I'm not sure if it was just the creator having a version of the story in his head that wasn't exactly what the movie ended up being, or there's some depth that I'm not seeing currently, but I am familiar with the drama that came as a result of this movie. It was enough for Robert Crumb to kill his character in the comics and never do anything with him again. There was apparently a lawsuit filed to remove his name from the credits, this is extreme stuff. I wouldn't say it was that bad, but, again, I'm not as attached to the character as Crumb was, so maybe there's something there I'm just not seeing. Anyway, I've talked about this enough, and normally I wouldn't go into the background stuff like this, but it seemed important to bring up since I don't know what the original comics were like. I may say things in the rest of the review that go against the original intent of the comics, but that shouldn't be an issue. A movie like this should do a good enough job of pleasing a casual audience as much as it would the die-hard Fritz fans at the time.
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| Robert Crumb |
I'll give the movie this: it really made me miss the days of hand-drawn animation. There's just a simple charm about them that I really love, and parts of the animation style here really reminded me of the old Looney Tunes shorts I would watch over and over as a kid. The backgrounds are all hand-drawn, in that 'barely any detail' style that just works somehow, and the character models feel faithful to how they looked in the comics. I can't really comment on how rough the animation could be at times, since that's the idea, though the occasional inconsistency like Fritz wearing his red jumper at the start of a scene, only from him to be wearing his suit in the next shot is a different matter. It shouldn't be that hard to get that right. The voice acting is fine enough, and I feel like everyone did their jobs for the roles they were playing. Skip Hinnant did a great job as Fritz, enough if the creator didn't feel it was accurate. I really need to stop bringing up the movie vs the comics, but I feel like that specifically is just Crumb having a specific idea of Fritz's voice for years and years only for something slightly different to be considered 'wrong'. Hinnant did a great job. Moving on.
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| Skip Hinnant as Fritz the Cat |
The actual plot itself is where the movie starts to lose me. There's a lot going on in this movie, and none of it really seems to matter. The film is very segmented, and that feels like a result of taking multiple different stories from the comics and putting them into an 80 minute movie without really considering how they were going to connect. Seriously, Fritz at one point burns down a building with him in it, and it's never brought up again. I know we're in this strange comic world where physics doesn't really matter, but I at least want the story to be coherent. Maybe that's just down to me wanting something out of the movie that it doesn't want to be, as for the most part the film knows what it wants to do and just does it. And there's a lot of great stuff here. Even if it was irrelevant by the end, that scene that leads to Fritz accidentally burning down a building was a really good insight into his character. And the use of billiards balls to symbolise a heartbeat is a genius move. That scene in general was really tense and shocking, which just makes the more boring moments all that disappointing. Because there were moments in this movie that just dragged. I don't know why we needed a conversation between 3 rabbi about... whatever they were talking about, as it did nothing for the movie. And some of the the transitions... good God, talk about drawn out. I don't need a 1 minute transition which basically solely consists of the background image for the next scene slowly moving towards the camera and into focus. It's just not necessary, and feels like it was just there to pad the runtime. There are a few moments that feel like this, and those are the moments that really stopped me from enjoying it as a package.
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| Judy Engles as Winston Schwartz |
Finally, I do need to talk about this film's rating because this was the first animated film to ever be given an X-rating in America. That in and of itself feels faithful to the source material, but it allows the movie to push the boundaries for an animated movie. I respect the movie for doing that, and there are a lot of moments where the movie uses this to its advantage. They're able to discuss some hard-hitting themes, which generally land. A lot of the time, however, it just comes across as an excuse to show an animated animal genital, which are 3 words I never wanted to string together like that. Yeah, there are sex scenes in this movie, and most of them are handled well enough for the source material. There are other times where, for no reason, maybe a boob will slip out of someone's top or a character will end up with their crotch exposed for no reason, and those are the moments that really feel like an X-rating for the sake of an X-rating. Those are the more juvenile moments that feel like they're only there to get a cheap laugh, which is a shame since there's a lot of good humour here otherwise. There are more than a few jokes that got a decent laugh out of me, mainly involving the pigs. And there are some of the jokes that lean on the X-rated side that are genuinely funny, and when the film utilises its shock value for the sake of humour, it can either be a success or a failure. The jokes that just amount to 'Look at that animated d***' are the ones that let it down, and, again, it's a shame, since the movie seems more clever than that sort of material. I don't know, I'm not the kind to just laugh at someone with their pants down, and I'm not so immature that nudity is a selling point for me, so it didn't land. I'm sure there is an audience out there that'll just eat that stuff up, but it's not for me. I was more sold on the themes and characters and the jokes that were a little more high-brow. I don't know.
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| Phil Seuling as Pig Cop |
Fritz the Cat (1972) is a film I don't hate, but I don't necessarily like all that much either. There are parts of it I liked, and for those parts I'm glad I saw it, but overall, I've seen better. It's not the kind of movie where if you told me you liked it I'd ostracise you for it, but it's just not for me. 4/10.
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