noizyme

Before I begin, I give huge respect to Ralph Bakshi to release this experimental animation to the public and going against the family- friendly-grain of most animated films from Disney and other studios. I loved everything that the film swings for (anti-establishment, questioning technology taking over our humanity, trying to tell an actual story instead of animating "horses eating apples"), but its delivery is a bit askew. I understand that they had a rather lax attitude to hiring animators off the street, which is interesting, but you can definitely see the results in this film. The emotions of the characters don't match how they're drawn, and this film suffers from "over-animation" if anything...back then, its as if every wrinkle in the characters' clothing had to move in every frame, and it gets a bit absurd. I LOVED THE ROTOSCOPING...it was my favorite thing (aside from the wonderfully intricate background paintings) to watch, and the DVD has a wonderful "making of" video with Bakshi describing what the process was like. There's a commentary track, too, which I didn't listen to, but I got a lot of information from the "making of" video. The story was confusing a lot of times, and why certain characters ran off with different groups of faeries and elves and got captured almost seemed without reason. Having Bakshi describe the story in the "making of" video almost sounds like a completely difficult thing to capture, and I think the film needed to be worked on for a few more years. The thing that dates the movie the most is the funk music that plays during certain action sequences, as if it were a blaxploitation film or something...the breathy, airy singing of their "theme" for the movie is another 70's throwback that needs to go (and had nothing to do with the film). The Nazi thing...confusing as hell. I'm not sure why this was added in the movie or even the story...maybe to show that how dumb the bad guys were because they really dug war propaganda (?). As a fan of animation, I really liked it, but not enough to watch it over and over. It's crude, somewhat hastily-made, and could've been refined to be a lot more if given the time, but the studio's attitude was not in agreement to do that, so this is what you get.

Well, curiosity got the best of me. I had seen this DVD on shelves for a couple of years now, and I gave it a shot tonight. I am usually quick to hate on these types of trendy cult films that gain followings within the first month of its release, but I have to give it to the guys at Twisted Studios and Lionsgate. This was an entertaining, Shakespearean- style musical complete with the new addition of "comic-book frames" telling parts of the story along with a full, dark-themed scenery. **Whoever downvotes this movie down to a 1-star rating is missing whatever sense of humor they thought they had.** This movie is purely farce and full of black comedy woven into a scorned-love story complete with cheap gore and cheap songs. It's an updated Rocky Horror Picture Show for fans of Rob Zombie's/Marilyn Manson songs with a touch of Evanescence singing. The gore is not meant to disgust the audience nor shock them; these are all nods towards stage plays where you know the props are not real. Although the effects used on Blind Mag's "R2D2-3D- projection" eyes was a treat, and I thought all of the imagery had a very nice, stylish tone that really brought the audience into their world. Was the movie "groomed to be a cult classic?" Who knows, but what was created is worthy of watching over every now and again for entertainment's sake, and should be given a good chance amongst other cult classics. Why fight a good thing?