Ralph Bakshi
1992
101 minutes
Buckle up, this is going to be an unexpectedly rough watch.
You saw most of this around the time it came out, or at least when it finally hit cable television after being in the theaters. It was one you always got confused with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and aside from Bob Hoskins in that classic, you have to admit you may like this one slightly better. At least it lacks the now-putrid stench of Disney about it.
However, your contemporary watch of this is going to be very distracted, with a few stops and starts. You will begin watching this at a bar and then get very sidetracked by your messy personal life. You'll give up and watch an entire other film in the meantime. (If you would like to simulate this, bookmark this page before turning to another random section and read the entry for that before returning here.) The next day you will wake up bright and early, attempt to work out, and then try to attend Flower Mart, but this will be marked by numerous tragic and stressful arguments. You will head home before noon to fetch a six pack of beer from your refrigerator, and you will quickly consume this during the course of the day just to make things bearable.
You will run into similarly tipsy friends who announce they are having a cookout later in the day, which sounds awfully good to your empty stomach. You will give them a few beers from your bag and then purchase two more six packs in preparation for this. Unfortunately this gathering will be canceled as soon as they get home and decide falling asleep sounds like a better option, leaving you with a bag full of beer you purchased for the cookout.
Some of your surplus beers you will give away to friends. Others you will sip at from a plastic red solo cup you obtained by trading a few pours of beer from a fresh can to a stranger. Eventually you will sit down at a random table and end up drinking four or five beers while restarting this film from the beginning. You'll watch most of this film before stumbling to your favorite bar in town to sip a Natty Boh and finish the film.
Your friends will be horrified and amused by how hammered you are since you rarely even let yourself get tipsy around them. For the record you will do remarkably well considering exactly how much alcohol you have consumed--your tolerance is fairly heroic if you spread it out, but this isn't something you want to be particularly known for.
Later in the evening you will be gravely offended by a rude woman who asks you a lot of nosy questions about your finances and then demands you pay for her dinner and drinks. You will baffle your friends by contemptuously paying for one of her drinks, which seems absurd considering how impolite she was being to you. They will not be able to wrap their head around the fact that for you in this context this is one of the biggest ways you can tell a relative stranger to go fuck themselves that is possible short of outright punching them in the face.
As for the film, it's a blurry haze but you still prefer Bakshi being skeezy to a gaudy corporate parade of intellectual property. Sleep it off, tomorrow is another day.
Time to choose something different: