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Ralph Bakshi\u2019s \u201cAmerican Pop\u201d is not so much about a story as it is about music and the power it holds. As trite as it is to say, Music is the soundtrack of our lives, and as such has a power over us to help us cope, help us think, and is the key to our memories and fates. \u201cAmerican Pop\u201d is not so much the story of many men through history originating from a faithful Jewish man who refused to vacate his temple during the raiding of Russian Czars one day, it\u2019s more the evolution of music and how the people in and around the transformation are but a mere microcosm. From a Canter to a Vaudevillian, to a piano player, \u201cAmerican Pop\u201d may be the exploration of music but Bakshi also manages to convey how it\u2019s served as a source of love and emotion for a long line of men craving some sort of love and affection in their lives.<\/p>\n
Instead they found it in violence, and the false assumption that money and drugs bought it. Bakshi\u2019s animation is strong if much too dependent on rotoscoping. Though the animation director has always had the precedent of relying on rotoscoping, \u201cAmerican Pop\u201d is about ninety-nine percent rotoscoping, the other one based on live action. There\u2019s also the shocking finale in which we\u2019re introduced to a jive talking smooth moving drug dealing blond kid whose father was a drug using bastard Tony, the main character for much of the film. He coasts through city streets with punks and losers and hookers, and he enters in to a recording studio threatening to leave as their dealer if they don\u2019t hear his music. This hardcore punk plays\u2026 \u201cNight Moves\u201d from Bob Seger. What? That\u2019s the big build up?<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the marginalized albeit look at the men of this long line going from pure Jewish to pure blue eye blond hints at potential story threads with Tony being the most interesting as a man void of anything in his life looking for a way to fill it. There\u2019s also the bittersweet defeat of the young piano player Benny, another man desperate to fill a void in his life after watching his mother die from a letter bomb and then being disowned by his father for joining the military. That\u2019s sadly wasted for more in your face looks at the darker side of the evolution of the sound of generations with the final being expressed by Pat Benatar\u2019s \u201cHell is for Children.\u201d But there\u2019s a significant problem.<\/p>\n
Where\u2019s Bo Diddley, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Motown, Aretha Franklin? Null and void in Bakshi\u2019s view of the history of music and its influences. As for \u201cAmerican Pop\u201d its special effects and camera tricks are still rather eye catching, but there\u2019s little in the way of substance to be found here. For a movie I\u2019ve been anxious to see for years to give Bakshi another chance to wow me, it\u2019s a shame that there\u2019s not much to this movie. Or Bakshi. I\u2019m still not much of a fan of Ralph Bakshi to this day. His films are important and influential but damned if they can manage to entertain me beyond a mere raised brow. \u201cAmerican Pop\u201d has a wonderful soundtrack, but it fails to provide an actual story unless you look hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ralph Bakshi\u2019s \u201cAmerican Pop\u201d is not so much about a story as it is about music and the power it holds. As trite as it is to say, Music is the soundtrack of our lives, and as such has a power over us to help us cope, help us think, and is the key to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[50,99,246,302,700,817,874,1087],"class_list":["post-1485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-a","tag-animation","tag-cult","tag-drama","tag-musical","tag-ralph-bakshi","tag-romance","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}