Well, let me start with the positives that come to mind. First of all, kudos to Ralph Bakshi for venturing into the realm of adult-oriented animation, especially as early as 1977. "Wizards" may be a miserable specimen of a cartoon, but it had the guts to stretch the bounds of the genre, which is more than most animations can say, even thirty years later. Also, -some- of the character animation is well done, and many of the character designs resemble horribly twisted caricatures of Dr. Seuss ideas...which is kinda cool in a dark and creepy way. The majority of the characters, however, are nothing short of awful. And then I suppose I should also mention that the song during the ending credits was kinda nice...and I almost actually felt emotion when Avatar cried, considering he is portrayed as a ridiculous goof in the rest of the movie. Almost.

You may be wondering how it is that I have anything good to say about an animation to which I have given the lowest possible rating. Well, "Wizards" is absolutely unlike anything I've seen before, in that it has a few brilliantly shining, microscopic qualities, and the rest of it is unimaginably, incomprehensibly, unfathomably, horrendously, excruciatingly bad. So let's get to that part.

The story is just an excuse to show a World War II, "Nazi's-vs.-goodguys" scenario, with fantasy creatures. I'm not making a comparison. I mean it is ACTUALLY about a battle between Nazi goblins and ghouls, who watch actual Hitler footage from their evil wizard's projector, and the "Allies" of elves, dwarves, and faeries. I don't know why there are no humans, or for that matter, why this movie was ever made. Bakshi even had the nerve to rotoscope broken, shadowy footage of WWII and cheesy, live-action actors dressed in costumes into the battle scenes, complete with swirling, nonsensical rainbow backgrounds, apparently thinking they would somehow fit into his otherwise animated feature. I almost felt insulted by this...my eyes, at least, were.

Did I say "otherwise animated?" I almost forgot to mention that about half of the movie consists of black and white still frames, with a voice-over narrator describing to you what is happening. Now...I've always had a pet peeve for movies that tell you - rather than show you - the setting in the beginning, as well as movies that say things like, "3,000 years later." Not only does "Wizards" do both of these things, but continues to do them throughout the film!

Then you have the character Elinore, who was undoubtedly created so that Bakshi could sit next to another male viewer in the audience, nudge him in the side, and say, "Ehh? That one's pretty hot, isn't she?" You've also got a nice little scene of awful and shameless anti-semitism, which seems ironic in a movie that is meant to portray the Nazis in a bad light. The only remotely interesting characters are the two wizards and a magical robot named "Peace" who walks around with a gun and a sword. By "remotely interesting" I mean, "still bad."

No, wait, I'm not finished ranting. Several animated scenes, including the rotoscoped ones, were recycled later in the film. Guys with swords were somehow managing to kill guys with guns. The bad guys were driving tanks. Tanks??!! Every female in the movie was scantily clad. The voice acting was amateur at best. Why did the characters get randomly teleported into the mountains? How did Weehawk and Peace get out of the caves? Why do some people consider this a "family film??"

Let me end this obscenely long review by saying that, at least, Bakshi was essentially forced to use rotoscoping when Fox refused to give him adequate budget to animate the battle scenes. But of course you can only blame Fox so much, considering that Bakshi is quoted as saying, "Why bother animating all of this?" and, "It also was the way that showed me how to do Lord of the Rings, so it worked two ways." (ref. Wikipedia) The reader may note that Bakshi's "The Lord of the Rings" has long held the title of being Keyframe's vote for the worst animated film of all time.

And it was inspired...inspired...by "Wizards."