I remember when I first went to this site and clicked on this title when I read the country of orgin , I was shocked, the US???. Its kind of sad that even more then thirty years after this movie has been realeased, major animated movies in this country are still being made mostly for children. But, there is a glimmer of hope that we might one day see something like this again thanks to so many adult ccartoon sitcoms now a days. Toned down, but, that defeinetly won't be bad thing.

But anyways , the movie, well, its basically a view of life from a cartoonist (mike) eyes, a life filled with whores, pimps, murder and all that "good" stuff. I think the movie basically did a job showing his type of life ,very believeable, Mike has a twisted mind but the film basically sticks to reality, its just exagerated. Even though I did get lost in some parts, maybe i need to watch the film again , but sometimes things just don't add up. Thankfully, it dosen't happen too often. This film isn't exactly suppose to be down right hilarious, as the orginal trailer at the director Ralph Bakshi's web site states. Its suppose to show real life from a twisted view and real life isn't always funny. But trust me, you will defeintely laugh at a good amount of the scenes. So pick this one up.

Ralph Bakshi's second feature film 'Heavy Traffic', is possibly his best. I have a personal preference for 'Wizards', but if I'm feeling like something particularly gritty and uncompromising, this film fits the bill.

I think it's rather sad really, that Bakshi seems to be remembered for his failures as much as his innovations, and that the magnitude of the revolution which he tried to bring to American animation in the 1970's is rarely appreciated. Why? Because it didn't take on, I suppose. People kept making (admittedly often brilliant) animated films for kids. The result? 30 years down the track young western adults are buying Japanese animation by the truckload. Which is a real shame, because a lot of the anime out there is pretty bad, and the west lost out on the chance to capture an older teenage or younger adult audience with its homegrown product. Seen in this light, films like 'Heavy Traffic' are STILL ahead of their time.

Rant over. Sorry.

As to the film itself, 'Heavy Traffic' is pretty obviously based in some part on Bakshi himself. Michael, the lead character, is a talented cartoonist living in New York with his drunken Italian mobster father and doting, hysterical Jewish mother (some of the scenes of domestic violence between these two - from both mother and father - are particularly graphic and I really urge you to skip this movie if seeing that sort of thing on film gets to you badly - because with animation as a medium, few punches are pulled.)

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. When Michael moves in with his black barworker girlfriend, we really get exposed to the seedy side of early 70's New York. There's a stalking amputee, a tragic drag queen who actually likes being beaten up by rednecks, prostituion, and absolutely the most harrowing death scene I've ever seen on film (at least that's the effect it had on me.)

And yet none of this is ever done out of a giggling undergraduate sense of bad taste. It has far more in common with 'Midnight Cowboy' than it does with 'South Park'. It simply depicts street life in all its ragged glory and grime, and with its humanity 100 intact. And nestled amongst this confronting material is an absolutely brilliant animated sequence which takes life from one of Michael's drawings, to the beat of a Chuck Berry song.

'Heavy Traffic' mixes live action and animation, mostly in the same way 'Balto' does, with a live action opening and closing sequence, but the two are mixed together at times during the movie proper. When this happens though, it's less of the 'animated character in a RL world' schtick, ala 'Pete's Dragon' or 'Roger Rabbit', and more of 'bits of the real world finding themselves into the background of a cartoon', ala nothing else I can think of at the moment. Some of the backdrops are still photographs of New York street scenes which Bakshi photographed and then drew over - this might be one of the only movies you'll see with rotoscoped _backgrounds_ (I'm sure that term doesn't make sense, but you get what I mean)

As with most of his other early movies, I must also make mention of Bakshi's superb use of dialog. Sometimes when I listen to the dialog on these early movies it sounds so natural that I could barely believe it was rehearsed. As it turns out, this may be the case. Apparently with 'Fritz the Cat' (and I'm guessing with 'Heavy Traffic') Bakshi would actually record dialog by taking a tape recorder out onto the streets in New York, in a similar way, I suppose to what Nick Park did decades later with 'Creature Comforts'. I get the feeling that there are sections of dialogue in the film that are either unscripted, or heavily improvised. One scene I remember especially is the old guy on the roof with the pigeons. To my ears it just sounds fantastic. To you it may sound like a mess.

This isn't a perfect film, and it doesn't try to be, but it may just be a great one. I'm going to do something unusual and quote another review in closing, because I really couldn't paraphrase it any better. An uncredited review on videoflicks Canada, says in part

"beyond all the wildness beats a real heart and piercing honesty... his hilarious, horrifying, bittersweet portrait of urban alienation and artistic struggle still resonates with a raw power that has lost none of its force in the passing years"

Whoever you are, you got that right.

You know what really gets me, though. The current front page review on imdb has some guy carrying on about how the mix of live and animation was done much better in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', and why didn't Bakshi 'think of the kids' when he made films like this. Can I blunt? Put the kids in bed. This is an adult's film. Does anyone go around whinging "think of the adults" if someone makes a live action flick for children? Bakshi was trying to push against the barrier which insists that in the west animated movies can only be for children. It seems such an obvious fallacy, and yet, as reviews like that demonstrate, thirty years on it's obvious not a lot has changed.

'Heavy Traffic' is a hair's breadth away from 4 stars.