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HEAVY TRAFFIC
Review by Michael Jacobson
Stars:
Joseph Kaufmann, Beverly Hope Atkinson
Director: Ralph Bakshi
Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
Video: Standard 1.33:1
Studio: MGM/UA
Features: Theatrical Trailer
Length: 76 Minutes
Release Date: September 5, 2000
Film (zero stars)
I consider myself an animation fan.
I’m no fan of Ralph Bakshi. I
know plenty of ‘toon buffs through the years that have heralded his work as
visionary and revolutionary, but for me, watching one of his films has always
been like being trapped inside the mind of a crude adolescent, who finds all the
wrong things funny and whose taste runs gleefully toward the perverse and the
disgusting. For those who are unfamiliar with Mr. Bakshi’s work, his
most recognized commercial endeavors include Fritz
the Cat, Cool World, and the Rolling Stones’ video for Harlem Shuffle. I’ve
seen a few of his films, and I’ve considered most of them weak, uninspired,
and self serving. But until I saw Heavy
Traffic, I’d never known such complete repulsion and hatred toward an
animated film. Or frankly, just
about any kind of film.
I’ve been reviewing movies for about three years now, and
this marks the first time I’ve actually given a zero star rating to a picture.
Sure, I’ve reviewed plenty of films that I’ve disliked, but I’d
never come across one that I thought was so completely devoid of redemptive
qualities it deserved the mark of the lowest of the low.
There truly is a first time for everything, and while I don’t relish
dropping the ax, I can still do it with a clear conscience.
For starters, I’ve never cared for Bakshi’s style of
animation. It exists not to tell a
story, nor to create characters, but rather, seemingly to express some kind of
bizarre violent psycho-sexual fantasy world that exists in his mind, as well as,
I’m guessing, to make himself laugh. What
kind of things does he find funny? Drawing
intimate body parts, for one. He
loves to create strangely proportioned women and have a breast pop out of a
dress for a personal appearance. Other
parts get equal attention, in even more grotesque and exaggerated ways, but
I’d prefer to maintain as much of a standard of good taste as I possibly can
in this review.
Bakshi also finds humor in stereotyping.
The lead character, Michael (Kaufmann), has an Italian father, a Jewish
mother, and an African American girlfriend.
The Italian father is a bloated, unkempt, beer guzzling womanizing
abusive pig, who of course, works for the mob.
The Jewish mother is clinging, aggressive, insulting and overly
protective of her son. As for the
girlfriend—well, there are a number of black characters in this film, and all
of them are either hoodlums or prostitutes, and Bakshi’s script never misses
an opportunity to implement the ‘n’ word, even by Michael to his own
girlfriend.
Oh, and the handicapped are ridiculed, too.
Bakshi obviously thought it was funny to have a bouncer with no legs.
Laughing yet? Bakshi
obviously has no instinctual understanding of the nature of comedy. The bouncer might have garnered a chuckle, albeit a cruel and
crude one, had his condition served a purpose in the story.
But, no. Bakshi wrongly
assumes that the lack of legs itself was the gag, rather than the foundation of
one.
Even worse is the way he tries to play scenes of domestic
violence for laughs. The father and
mother go at each other with various weapons, and the blood spatters frequently
(pausing for the occasional breast-popping-out gag). It eventually ends with the father beating the mother until
she’s bloody, bruised, and apologetic, and the movie presents it like a
punchline. Repulsive.
Then, as a topper, the mob father puts a contract out on his own son
simply because he’s sleeping with a black woman.
Just in case you thought it wasn’t going any lower.
And what of Michael’s relationship with Carol (Atkinson)?
Is it an attempt to comment on racial prejudices?
Does it boldly imply that love smashes through all societal barriers?
Given that Michael is pimping Carol to pay for their trip west, I tend to
think not.
Violence and sex are here in equal abundance, and though
I’m certainly no prude, I was appalled at the complete lack of responsibility
Bakshi had in trying to coax laughter out the most horrible looking images he
could conjure up. I compared his
thinking to that of an adolescent, and that really shows through in the
look-what-I’m-getting-away-with attitude towards his work.
We see, among other things, animals engaged in sex, juveniles beating
each other until they collapse in rivers of blood, an execution scene that
features a godfather’s bullet wounds oozing blood while he still munches his
spaghetti, and a slow motion, almost loving close up look at a head being blown
open while the brains and skull scatter. And,
just to be well-rounded in its tastelessness, there are also scenes involving
urination and defecation.
I don’t want to give the impression that I’m one who
thinks animation should be strictly family entertainment and not try to push any
envelopes—I’m all for creative expression in any form, and I fully respect
Mr. Bakshi’s right to make a picture like Heavy
Traffic if that’s the kind of film he wants to see.
I also reserve my right as a film lover and a critic to loathe such a
boastfully valueless piece of cinema.
And as far as animation goes, no bars have been raised
here. Though the cover box
proclaims Leonard Maltin’s quote that the film is a “revolutionary
combination of live-action and animation”, don’t buy it.
Animated characters were simply often imposed on live action backgrounds,
many of which are poor fits, to save time.
You want a car in traffic on a busy street?
Draw one car and put it on top of stock footage of real cars.
Cityscapes too involved to draw? Don’t.
Take a picture of a city and put your characters in the foreground.
There’s no interaction between real and unreal.
Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry the Mouse was more advanced than anything
offered here.
The resulting visual style hurts the head and churns the
stomach. There’s no flow, no
rhythm, no cohesiveness, and certainly, no point.
I found myself wanting to metaphysically reach out and grab Ralph Bakshi
by his lapels, shake him violently, and demand that he give me back the hour and
fifteen minutes of my life that he so cruelly wasted.
Video **
MGM has elected to present this film in full frame rather
than it’s correct 1.66:1 ratio (the food is terrible, and such small
portions?). The major problem with
the video is in the print itself, which suffers considerably from aging
artifacts, most notably dirt, scratches, smears, and debris that flicker across
the screen (worse in some scenes, better in others).
There’s also a bit of noticeable color muting, particularly apparent in
the film’s live action finale. It
looks like nothing more than a bit of good old fashioned fading.
As far as the digital presentation, there are no signs of compression
artifacts along the way: no grain, no color bleeding, no shimmer and no chroma noise.
Nor is there any indication of undue softness.
I think it’s fair to say that, except for the framing issue, MGM has
done about as well as they could do with this source material.
Audio **
This is a perfectly adequate 2 channel mono mix.
Nothing about it is either good enough or poor enough to merit a mention.
Dialogue is clean and clear throughout, and the music sounds fine, with
fair but unspectacular amounts of dynamic range. The best part of the feature may be the beatnik sounding
version of Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough
Fair, performed by Sergio Mendes.
Features *
The disc only contains a trailer, but for once, I was
actually thankful for the absence of a commentary track.
Had there been one, I would have had to watch this thing a second time in
order to report on it!
Summary:
Heavy Traffic is simply just about as bad as it can get. It’s so bad that you can’t even laugh at how bad it is. It’s crude, sloppy, tasteless, and utterly repulsive, with attempts at humor that’s bound to offend just about anybody who doesn’t perpetually have the mind of a twelve-year-old. There’s plenty of good animation and anime available on DVD—embrace it instead, and avoid this travesty.