American Pop Review

Let me take you back to the early-mid 80’s: John Hughes sat upon a throne of gold, Americans created their first test tube baby, and both the slasher genre and the punk rock movement had finally established themselves as credible and fairly mainstream forms of entertainment. It was also that decade that legendary film maker/animator Ralph Bakshi released his (in my humble opinion) masterpiece of a film entitled American Pop.

This movie is simply beautiful. It incorporates the use of rotoscoping, a style of animation in which live action performances are shot on film and animated over frame by frame, to tell the story of a Russian Jewish Immigrant and his lineage of sons who all aspire to become songwriters and musicians. This is really where the movie shines; it showcases the mainstream musical movements throughout the twentieth century in the span of an hour and a half concisely and effectively (ok…ninety six minutes…but why sweat the details?). You actually feel as though the music is a main character itself and you are watching its development from its humble vaudevillian roots to the hardcore, trash punk sounds that were popular upon the film’s release.

This movie is particularly distinctive because it isn’t one protagonist we are following, but four of them, all living throughout the different musical scenes and political strifes of their respective time periods. The first of this family line is Zalmie who struggles to make it in the Vaudevillian scene as a song and dance man and a comedian. His son Benny becomes a Jazz pianist, who performs his music at local Jazz clubs and venues. His son Tony travels across the country to San Francisco and achieves fame as a folk/classic rock songwriter. Finally, we end with his son Pete, who becomes a punk, hard rock musician and singer. Their stories are juxtaposed with various montages made up of live action photographs and animations. These animations depict scenes of popular dance crazes and iconic imagery of the pop culture of the day, which continues to change through out the film.

If I could sum this film up in one word, it would be change. It focuses our attention on the experiences and struggles of a man, in a period of his life, taking place during a period in history. But the moment you become too comfortable with the established character and environment, it takes you into another time, now following the descendent of the previous protagonist. It forces you to acknowledge how fast and inevitable change happens throughout history (and believe me, we witness a LOT of it). You learn to come to terms with the fact that the unfortunate events we may suffer through now are temporary in the long run and the world will continue to turn long after we are gone (yeah…I know…cosmic, right? Kind of makes you wish you were taking drugs).

The main flaws I see in this film stem primarily from the budget and perhaps (if you must nitpick) the limitations of Bakshi’s rotoscoping capabilities (though to be fair, all of Bakshi’s films suffer from similar problems in front of the camera and behind the scenes). Bakshi has gone on record describing how difficult it is to rotoscope facial expressions, so on a few occasions the performances of the actors did not come out the way he wanted them to. I myself have seen other movies use the rotoscoping technique more successfully, such as Heavy Metal (another independently made animated film from 1981).

Despite this, the overall impressive quality of the writing and acting, the diverse and carefully chosen songs for the soundtrack and the incredibly artistic look and feel of the film easily make it one of the most under rated pieces of animation throughout the history of film making. The strangest part of it all is that this film has never attained any real fame apart from its initial success at the box office. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone put this film in a “best of” list (fine…IMDB listed it as #6 in it’s Top 100 Greatest Animated Films list) nor have I ever bumped into another human being who has seen it before I showed it to them. Though I find this to be a shame, I must admit the snob in me rather enjoys its barely “cult” status. It allows me to don the persona of Captain Marketing, a masked avenger of the night who exposes obscure and under rated films to the masses through various movie nights and independent film events with a wide range of audience members.

All it took for me to want to see this movie was a simple youtube clip, and to this day it has earned a place on my shelf as one of my favorite movies of all time.

4 out of 5 stars

Notable Tidbits

-Sicilian-American actor Vincent Schiavelli plays a bit role in this film. He is probably the only fairly recognizable celebrity in the movie.

-Bob Seeger recorded a rare piano track to his hit song “Night Moves” for the film, which for the love of me I have never been able to get my hands on.

-Director Ralph Bakshi provides his incredibly distinct voice for a one liner part as a pianist in a night club.