AMERICAN POP (1980)
Label: Warner Archive
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 95 Minutes 57 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Ralph Bakshi
Cast: Ron Thompson, Richard Moll, Lisa Jane Persky, Jeffrey Lippa, Richard Singer, Marya Small
The Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat, The Lord of the Rings, Wizards) directed American Pop (1980) is a multi-generation tale that tells the story of American popular music, tracing it alongside the parallel story of four generations of the same family; starting off with a turn-of-the-century immigrant mother and her son Zalmie escaping Imperialist Russian after their Rabbi father/husband is murdered by Cossacks, by emigrating to New York City, the son Zalmie growing into an adult who breaks into vaudeville after entertaining the troops during WW1, afterward he marries a striptease girl named Bella (voiced by Lisa Jane Persky, The Sure Thing), they have a son named Benny who becomes a jazz piano player and ends up enlisting to fight WWII against his father's wishes, where his life ends at the hands of a Nazi soldier who catches his off guard while he plays piano. His fatherless son Tony grows up to be a beatnik punk in Long Island who steals his step dad's car to travel the country, ending up in Kansas City where he meets a gorgeous diner waitress, they hit it off and have a one-night stand. Moving onto San Francisco he hooks up with a hippie rock band and becomes their main songwriter, falling in love with their singer, a Janis Joplin-esque Frankie Heart (voiced by Mews Small, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), both becoming dope addicts, and eventually she O.D.s and dies right before a headlining gig with Jimi Hendrix opening up the show.. Tony ends up meeting a young man named Pete who. he recognizes as the by-product of his one-night stand with the waitress in Kansas, taking him under his drug-addled wing they travel together to New York City, where Pete grows up to become a street-busking drug-dealer to rock stars, using his leverage as a drug dealer to take a bite out of the rock superstar apple.
On this journey we get snippets of American history stitched into the narrative; Zalmie's mother perishes in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Bella becomes collateral damage during a bloody mafia war, and WWII claims their son. Along the way several of the characters end up pursuing careers in music and entertainment to varying degrees of success, we see Tony hanging out at Beatnik café where a beatnik poet (voiced by Richard Moll, The Dungeonmaster) recites a rousing poem, and we also see the rise of the San Francisco 60's music scene, and there's a bit of punk rock via a Sex Pistols tune.
Bashki's fluid roto-scoping animation style, which is basically animation traced over frames of live-action footage, was ground-breaking and quite unlike the Disney-ized mainstream animation of the era; offering a kaleidoscopic animated trip through American pop music with some brief historical moments and a multi-generational family drama unfolding parallel to that. I love Bakshi's stye but also recognize that it can be an acquired taste, but it adds such a unique flavor to the flick that does set it apart. The rotoscoped animation is mixed in with stylized static backdrops and vintage newsreel footage, sometime it feels pretty experimental. Perhaps more than the actual animation what I love about this flick are the backgrounds, which I find so dazzling, with more than a few nods to the Americana classic illustrations of Norman Rockwell, as well as some appropriately lysergic detours during a SF concert where a character has a bad acid-trip, and then later during the finale when Peter finally makes good on the long-distilled success sought after by generations of men in his family.
The adult-animated tale of American music told through the lens of a multi-generational family journey a fascinating watch, it's not perfect by any means, it can be a bit ramshackle, the contributions of black people on popular music is there but only on the margins. Even still, the texture of the story, the vibrancy of the decades-spanning multi-genre soundtrack, and the fetching animation and backgrounds are terrific, it's never dull. There were certainly times I wanted a bit more of the individual stories to be fleshed-out, but I'd rather want more than less, you know what I mean? It's Bakshi who made Wizards and Fiore & Ice, but some of the moments of violence, death and darkness were unexpected (but appreciated) in a film about music, stuff like the factory fire, the mafia turf war, and dope sick singers are dour indeed, but that just goes to show that the road to rock n' roll success ain't easy!
Audio/Video: American Pop (1980) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
In 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. The source shows appreciable grain and boasts a wonderful array of vivid well-saturated colors throughout with vivid primaries, and pleasing black levels. There's a bit of source-related grit to the image but overall a truly wonderful presentation for this animated gem. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with optional English subtitles. Dialogue sounds great and the massive decade-hopping soundtrack featuring ragtime, big band, jazz, early rock n' roll, soul, punk and more comes through wonderfully with selections from the Gershwin, Cole Porter, Bob Dylan, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed, Heart, Sex Pistols and Bob Seger just to name a few.
Sadly, no extras at all, not even a static menu on this one, you load the disc and it just starts to play. The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster illustration.
Special Features:
- None
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Screenshots from the Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Blu-ray:
