Actually Never

Sometimes you scroll through what’s leaving Prime soon and sometimes you make a decision and sometimes you have an experience.

What I knew

Dirty cartoon cat movie. Not really much beyond that, though. It was a thing I’d heard references to but had never really looked into it. I suppose I could say the same for Robert Crumb in general – I know of his work but don’t really know his work.

But I like cartoons. And cats. And dirty jokes. This should be my thing.

What I know

It was not, really, my thing.

Some of this was on me. Not to be too confessional here, but I have never been high enough or horny enough to fully appreciate this movie. This was the first X-rated animated movie and… yeah. If you ever wanted to see a lot of cartoon cat vaginas and nipples and penises, this is the movie for you.

There’s also a whole Internet for you. Or so I’ve heard.

The satire is all over the place. It feels a bit like some South Park where the target is: everyone. And there is a lot to satirize and criticize all over but it also feels pointless. In a literal sense, I mean. I do not know what point is being made, if any.

There are also some racial elements that are yikes-inducing to modern eyes. I get that it was a different time and a culture I know very little about, and nobody needs another middle aged white guy’s opinion on… well, anything, really, but they still let us have blogs for some reason, so I’ll just reiterate that I yikesed repeatedly. Moving on.

You know how the Citizen Kane DVD has a commentary track from Roger Ebert explaining all the things that were revolutionary about it that modern audiences might not know? I could have used one of those for this movie. I’m glad I got to watch it but I think I was missing a lot of context that would have been beneficial.

This did not stop me from immediately following it up with a viewing of the sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, made without the involvement of Robert Crumb or writer/director Ralph Bakshi. They did a good job of mimicking the style of the first movie, but it was worse than the first in pretty much every way. Less funny, less cohesive, and a racist aside that I had to rewind and rewatch because I was certain I couldn’t have heard it correctly.

You do get to see cartoon Hitler’s half-empty ballsack, so there’s that, but that’s offset by the significant decrease in the amount of cartoon cat genitals. If that’s your thing.