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.

Regardless of your judgment as to whether or not Fritz the Cat is an animated film that "goes too far," there's something about it that is more destructive than some of the raunchiest animated entertainment coming out today. For starters, the filmmaker Ralph Bakshi's anger permeates the film. You can call it a righteous anger, as I'm sure he felt it was. But it's anger like this that only helps destroy society, like what we've been witnessing in America recently. Imagine if Bakshi's cop-shooting-innocent-black-man scene was shown in mainstream theaters today. Violence (which he seems to think is cool in the black community) would be evermore justified by groups such as Black Lives Matter, who are fueled by this false narrative!Furthermore, I'm sure that because of Bakshi's frustrations working on cookie cutter animated programming back in the day, he wanted to come all out with in-your-face cursing, violence and sex... even if it involved cartoon animals (created by self-critical cartoonist Robert Crumb). Apparently the film is meant to be political, in the sense that obscene art = good art, just by virtue of subverting tradition. Not so in my book. It's one thing to be angry at America for its legitimate problems, but if you're not going to offer any solutions besides wallowing in indulgences, why should any sensible person listen to you?This film had wasted potential, but at least Crumb's thoughtful-if-not-naive dialogue shone through. And at least Bakshi was honest in his ambitions to make adult animation, as well as to ironically point out the self-righteousness of SJWs in the film's best scene.

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

I don't respect anyone who hasn't seen Fritz The Cat. Way way before The Simpsons and The Family Guy, this dirty intellectual cat, who's prone to smoking bongs and involving himself in orgies, created quite an uproar. This very clever animation, not for kiddies, shows this naughty cat get into some real mischief, one party where two cops (of course looking like pigs), are called out, one of them horny. One of the V.O's here sounds like Brad Garrett. Fritz and his girl take off. His car runs out of petrol. Real cool about it, as nothing really phases Fritz, he heads off on his journey. The finale where Fritz blows himself up, and surviving, really goes to prove, that cats do have nine lives, and where stitched up in hospital, he doesn't let this deter him in his sexploits. The script runs deep in potent dialogue, dealing with real issues of the sixties as if all the animated characters were real. But really, I think a lot of us just want to see some cats get it on and be amused at the same time. A comic adult romp, of cult status. Watch at your own risk.