This was the last Ralph Bakshi film I had yet to see; now that I have finally seen it, I must say I had some mixed feelings about it, as with other animations by this same directors.
After his version of The Lord of the Rings, American Pop and Fire and Ice, Hey Good Lookin' feels like a throwback to Bakshi's first three movies, being a satirical picaresque tale about an hedonist antihero with some bitter undertones.
Yet strangely enough, this movie feels somewhat tamed in comparison with Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin in particular. But then again, almost every animated film would feel pretty tamed in comparison with Coonskin.
There is also the fact that this movie is actually different from what Bakshi originally envisioned, wanting to make a mixture of animation and live action. Unfortunately, Warner considered said kind of film would be "unreleasable", resulting in most of the live-action footage being deleted and the original dialogue changed and recorded again.
That said, a lot of the distinctive aspects of Bakshi's ouvre are pretty much present here, with plenty of bizarre, surreal moments and his trademark raunchy humor.
On its favor, the story feels more coherent and less episodic than in his seventies movies, having a more striaghtforward narrative.
In all honesty, I would like to see the original cut, never released to the public. I personally think it's a shame when artists had to compromise their personal vision due studio interference.
Something similar happened with Cool World, the movie that almost killed Bakshi's career. While the final results had interesting elements, they are clearly an inferior version of what we could have got.
After his version of The Lord of the Rings, American Pop and Fire and Ice, Hey Good Lookin' feels like a throwback to Bakshi's first three movies, being a satirical picaresque tale about an hedonist antihero with some bitter undertones.
Yet strangely enough, this movie feels somewhat tamed in comparison with Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin in particular. But then again, almost every animated film would feel pretty tamed in comparison with Coonskin.
There is also the fact that this movie is actually different from what Bakshi originally envisioned, wanting to make a mixture of animation and live action. Unfortunately, Warner considered said kind of film would be "unreleasable", resulting in most of the live-action footage being deleted and the original dialogue changed and recorded again.
That said, a lot of the distinctive aspects of Bakshi's ouvre are pretty much present here, with plenty of bizarre, surreal moments and his trademark raunchy humor.
On its favor, the story feels more coherent and less episodic than in his seventies movies, having a more striaghtforward narrative.
In all honesty, I would like to see the original cut, never released to the public. I personally think it's a shame when artists had to compromise their personal vision due studio interference.
Something similar happened with Cool World, the movie that almost killed Bakshi's career. While the final results had interesting elements, they are clearly an inferior version of what we could have got.