I love this movie. What can I say? Well, I can't say it's exempt from criticism; the film has its flaws, both technically and chronologicaly, but it's enjoyable, at least, for me. Plus, the score is pretty good. "You're the only girl (I've ever really loved)" is a beautiful song; it really sets the mood for a movie about the city, the grimy life of Fritz as a college student, experimentation with sex and drugs, ect, and all while keeping with an early 40s type jazz sound. The other tracks are great too, especially the opening track, although the lyrics are a bit cheesy (but it's still fun and brings back some Janis Joplin esc vibes with it). The overall plot of the movie is blurry and is more of a mash up of different scenes and arcs from the original comics by Robert Crumb, but if you're looking for something sarcastic and offensive with a psychedelic twist, this one is for you. That being said, the film is not perfect and, in some ways, dated by it's politics and social commentary, so it must be viewed through the lenses of the time period in which it was made, as well as with context from the original comics. On a side note, I've heard people theorize that this movie influenced furries and furry culture. Hm.

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 admired the portrayal of women. Well done. What do women want actually? We are just vaginas and boobs with legs and arms and we are waiting for a guy to please us all the time, it doesn't matter who he is as long as he is a dude. We also share our guy with all the other women in the world because everything on this world is to please our masters. Men can do the revolution, we are not able to think about stuff, we don't even know what 'existential' means. Well, up yours Ralph Bakshi. This animation is just another example of superficial movies using 'deep stuff' to make itself look cooler or deeper than it really is. First of all, if you want to tell a story, you create one and show what you want to tell in that story, by creating a plot or using metaphors. You can't just shout the message directly. It is not storytelling, it is not a proper scriptwriting. I am sick of this kind of writers/directors using nudity and sex, or simply a couple of copy-paste philosophical messages and get all the votes. And most of the people just buy it and praise the show/movie like ' Wow, so deep. OMG, so brave. He is the voice of our generation. Great movie! ' . Anyone who is into film making will understand my point. There is no script, there is no plot or scenes that will help the backbone of the story if there is one. There is just irrelevant parts showing unrealistic women and their unrealistic reaction to penises as if they were playing in a porn movie, unnecessary sex scenes just to get attention, and copy-paste political messages that looks so detached. Just because characters shout ideas in some of the scenes doesn't mean it is a good/deep movie. Anyone can do that.And 2 points I gave were just the sake of the effort Bakshi made to make this crap.