Fritz the Cat
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Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American adult animated comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. It was Bakshi's feature film debut and is loosely based on the comic strip character of the same name by Robert Crumb. It was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States.
Plot
In a New York City park, hippies have gathered with guitars to sing protest songs. Fritz and his buddies show up in an attempt to meet girls. When a trio of attractive females walk by, Fritz and his friends exhaust themselves trying to get their attention, but find that the girls are more interested in the crow standing a few feet away. The girls attempt to flirt with the crow, making unintentionally condescending remarks about blacks, while Fritz looks on in annoyance. Suddenly, the crow rebukes the girls with a snide remark, indicating that he is gay, and walks away. Fritz invites the girls to "seek the truth", bringing them up to his friend's apartment, where a wild party is taking place. Since the other rooms are crowded, Fritz drags the girls into the bathroom and the four of them have group sex in the bathtub. Meanwhile, the police (portrayed as pigs) arrive to raid the party. As the two officers walk up the stairs, one of the party-goers finds Fritz and the girls in the bathtub. Several others jump in, pushing Fritz to the side where he takes solace in marijuana. The two officers break into the apartment but find that it is empty because everyone has moved into the bathroom. Fritz takes refuge in the toilet when one of the pigs enters the bathroom and begins to beat up the partygoers. As the pig becomes exhausted, a very stoned Fritz jumps out, grabs the pig's gun, and shoots the toilet, causing the water main to break and flooding everybody out of the apartment. The pigs chase Fritz down the street into a synagogue. Fritz manages to escape when the congregation gets up to celebrate the United States' decision to send more weapons into Israel.
Fritz makes it back to his dormitory, where his roommates ignore him. He decides to ditch his bore of life and sets all of his notes and books on fire. The fire spreads throughout the dorm, finally setting the entire building ablaze. In a bar in Harlem, Fritz meets Duke the Crow at a billiard table. After narrowly avoiding getting into a fight with the bartender, Duke invites Fritz to "bug out", and they steal a car, which Fritz drives off a bridge, leading Duke to save his life by grabbing onto a railing. The two arrive at the apartment of a drug dealer named Bertha, whose cannabis joints increase Fritz's libido. While having sex with Bertha, he realizes that he "must tell the people about the revolution!" He runs off into the city street and incites a riot, during which Duke is shot and killed.
Fritz hides in an alley where his older fox girlfriend, Winston Schwartz, finds him and drags him on a road trip to San Francisco. When the car runs out of gas in the middle of the desert, he decides to abandon her. He later meets up with Blue, a heroin-addicted rabbit biker. Along with Blue's horse girlfriend, Harriet, they take a ride to an underground hide-out where several other revolutionaries tell Fritz of their plan to blow up a power station. When Harriet tries to get Blue to leave with her to go to a restaurant, he hits her several times and ties her down with a chain. When Fritz objects to their treatment of her, he is hit in the face with a candle by a member of the group. Blue and the other revolutionaries then gang-rape her. After setting the dynamite at the power plant, Fritz suddenly has a change of heart and unsuccessfully attempts to remove it before being caught in the explosion. At a Los Angeles hospital, Harriet (disguised as a nun) and the girls from the New York park come to comfort him in what they believe to be his last moments. Fritz, after reciting the speech he used to pick up the girls from New York, becomes revitalized and has sex with the trio of girls while Harriet watches in astonishment.
Good Qualities
- It was Ralph's first time making an adult animated film. Its success and outstanding performance at the box office led him to both produce and star in even more good movies.
- It is the first full-length animated film to be exclusively for adults (at least in the United States), not made for children, especially since this film has gore and is dark, crows portrayed as afros, sex scenes, and nudity.
- Many funny scenes and one-liners, such as Fritz exclaiming "Far out" as the bomb goes off, and one of the pig cops showing a photo of their kids to the army of crows.
- Splendid voice acting, especially for the time.
- The film, in general, ultimately started the adult animation category in not just the West but the entire world. At the time, animation was almost entirely aimed at a young audience due to its ability to advertise products and hold a child's attention to give their parents time to do whatever it is they have on their hands, with the number of animations aimed at a young demographic rising more and more as more television sets were bought into households. But when this film came along, people discovered that animation could be just as successful for kids as when it's aimed at older audiences.
- Top-notch animation that's not bad for the 1970s. It's smooth, crisp, and doesn't repeat animation.
- Speaking of animation, when Duke the Crow is being shot in his heart by the police as the pool ball jumps with a heartbeat going slowly it can be used to fit the tone.
- Some characters are used to be likable, and sometimes they can be serious (despite the film's concept heavily implying that they wouldn't be so) like Fritz himself and Duke the Crow.
- Speaking of, Fritz gets some good character development in this movie. Sure, he may be a jerk at times, but even he has a good heart and that he feels empathy for others. He even felt thankful for Duke when he saved his life, which is an improvement over his book incarnation.
- This film has satire that it used about race relations, the free love movement, and left or right-wing politics. Things that were barely, if ever, touched upon in the form of animation at the time.
- It proves that animations don't necessarily mean that they have to obligatory be for kids. At the time (as previously mentioned in GQ#4), animation wasn't seen by many as something that could be made exclusively for adults (not that they still couldn't enjoy animation). But this movie is what ultimately broke that concept due to its success in telling other producers and animators that just because something was animated, doesn't mean it necessarily has to be for children.
Bad Qualities
- The plot isn't very good and lacks structure, although, to be fair, the movie's director Ralph Bakshi was new to making movies.
- Although this is not a flaw, this movie caused massive controversy from many viewers due to the rating and content, to the point of getting banned in Malaysia, New Zealand, The Malidives, and Spain.
- It can get too vulgar at times due to the mature themes, swearing, sex jokes, and adult content, which can get invasive over time.
