“Hey, what if cartoons, like, had sex?” is actually not as new a question as you might think. The cartoons have actually, like, having sex far longer than many people realise, with the first pornographic animations appearing at least four years before Micky Mouse did Steamboat Willy (which was not a porno which now seems like a bit of a missed opportunity).
But, while there has been sexually explicit animation for almost as long as there has been animation, it was always restricted to “stag” films. The mainstream perception of animation in the West, especially after the Hays office started cracking skulls, was that cartoons were for children.
Enter Ralph Bakshi.
Okay, if you’re a longtime reader of this blog then this isn’t your first rodeo. We have discussed his work here many a time and oft. Short version: Ralph Bakshi is at once a towering and transformative figure in the history of American animation and also kind of a terrible animator and film-maker. I can’t say I have actually enjoyed any of his films, but his best work tends to be the kind of grungy, ugly, politics-heavy film-making that you aren’t really supposed to enjoy. And, at least, Bakshi at his best his never boring.
No, you want really bad Bakshi you got to look at his tamer stuff. Either because he was taming himself to try and appeal to a broader audience (like Wizards) or because the studio held him down and cut his hair and forced him to conform to their, like, rules, maaaaan (like this fucking thing we’re about to review right here).
I will not mince words. This is the last of all Ralph Bakshi’s feature animations. I say “last” as in “last one he made” as well as “if all his movies were in a race, this is the one that wouldn’t even cross the finish line because it ate its own legs.”
This movie had a troubled history in the same way like, the Balkans, have had a troubled history and it’s easy to just blame the studio. In 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, gave Disney their biggest hit in history up to the that point, due in no small part to the instantly iconic appearance of Sexiest Cartoon of All Time Jessica Rabbit. Ralph Bakshi decided that, as the grandfather of sexy cartoons, the time had come for selling out. Bakshi approached Paramount and pitched them a dark cartoon horror story about a live action human who has sex with a cartoon woman and fathers a demonic half-human/half-toon child. Paramount greenlit the movie but forced Bakshi to cast Kim Basinger as the cartoon woman. Basinger wanted a more family friendly movie which led to the studio and Bakshi butting heads and resulting in the deeply compromised, barely coherent mess of a movie that we were left with. Everything that could go wrong with this movie did go wrong. Paramount launched a raunchy marketing campaign that completely oversold the limp PG 13 offering as some kind of taboo shattering sex-fest and then pretty much bribed the City of Los Angeles to allow them to descerate the Hollywood sign with a 75 foot cutout of Basinger’s character, Holly Would, which brought a hurricane of negative publicity.
Savage critical reaction and utterly abysmal word of mouth did the rest.
As I said, it’s easy to read that and assume that Bakshi was just another brilliant creative screwed over by the soulless suits but you know me. I never do things the easy way. Frankly, I think this project was doomed the second Ralph Bakshi thought he could do his own Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
See, the animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was overseen by Richard Williams who I would probably rank as the single most brilliant animator I have ever had the pleasure of reviewing if Hayao Miyazaki didn’t exist. And one of the reasons why Roger Rabbit works so well (apart from the fantastic script, excellent direction, phenomenal world-building, perfect score, terrifying villain, a career best performance from the late great Bob Hoskins and Jessica Fucking Rabbit ushering an entire generation into sexual awakening) was that there was literally nothing Williams could not do as an animator. That movie has characters from eight different animation studios from across three decades and they’re all rendered flawlessly. That movie is like Once Upon a Studio but without the benefit of modern technology and feature length. That’s Richard Williams. That’s the guy.
Whereas Bakshi…Bakshi is not that guy.
unshavedmouse 