Hey Good Lookin'

O.K. I am a big fan of cartoon movies. with live footage. This one gets goofy in some spots but very watchable.. get it on video, and give it a good chance.

The first time I saw this film was at 3am after returning home from a bar. I had only caught the end at the time but was greatly impressed. In fact the movie had left such an impression on me that I spent a month trying to locate a copy on video cassette. This video is now among one of my most prized tapes.

The story is based around two good friends, Crazy Shapiro and Vinnie. Vinnie is the leader of a gang known as the 'Stompers'. Vinnie isn't much of a leader, and Crazy is a loose canon. The story takes us on a journey of how Vinnie dealt with his cowardly ways and how Crazy took a leap to insanity.

One of the reasons this movie has made it into my all time favorites is due to how the movie ends.

This movie like most Psychedelic cartoons is not for everybody. You will either love it or hate it.

My review was written in August 1982 after a Times Square screening.

Ralph Bakshi's "Hey, Good Lookin'" is an adult-themed animated feature that successfully demonstrates the ability of the cartoon format to handle subjects generally thought of as live-action material, in this case a slice-of-life humorous character study of young people in Brooklyn, circa 1953. Shelved by Warner Bros. In 1975 while nearly completed, the final product (finished in the interim) evidences its stop-and-start history with awkward transitions and variable sound quality, but is well worth a platformed release at this time to tap the young adult audience that supports uninhibited comedy-drama.

While echoing Bakshi's own successful "Heavy Traffic", "Good Lookin'" really takes as its point of departure another WB picture, Martin Scorsese's 1973 "Mean Streets". The filmmaker even uses two of "Mean Streets"'s leading players, Richard Romanus and David Proval, to voice his main animated characters, Vinnie and Crazy, whose adventures in womanizing and gang brawling form the core of this period piece.

Bookended by an awkward flashback structure (which makes for an anticlimactic coda to the film), "Good Lookin'" succeeds in counteracting the ongoing nostalgia craze by portraying the good old days of the 1950s in New York as a violent, generally ugly time. The familiar Bakshi style uses painted backgrounds which emphasize a trash-laden, tenement look to the metropolis. In the foreground are beautifully animated grotesque characters, lampooning assorted ethnic and youth stereotypes, to the beat of unobtrusive "doo-wop" music written in the style of the early 1950s.

What makes this different from other Bakshi films (and other animated pictures as well) is the absence of fantasy or anthropomorphic animals: a down-to-earth story told strictly via animation. Though he reportedly had some live-action featured early on in the project (a la "Heavy Traffic" and "Coonskin") final version of film is strictly animated. The only fantasy segments involve (typically), garbage cans coming to life and Crazy's strange nightmare of being devoured by giant, distorted women.

What Bakshi uses his animation for is to exaggerate, giving the odd personages and their antics (familiar from subsequent vulgar exercises such as the recent hit "Porky's"), an appropriate absurity not possible in live-action. Also, the sex and profanity, abundant enough to earn an R rating, avoid the documentary representation problems (i.e., exploitative nudity in teen pics) by virtue of being animated.

Funny most of the way, "Good Lookin'" is hurt by a segue into melodrama in the later reels. Crazy lives up to his name by going nuts and shooting several members of the Black Chaplains gang. Audiences hooked up until this point will have to swallow an abrupt change of tone, but given the film's abbreviated running time this is not a fatal flaw.

Four lead characters are wonderfully etched. Vinnie, the definitive greaser, his nutty Jewish pal Crazy, the buxom neighborhood sex symbol Roz and her endlessly knoshing girlfriend Eva. The actors' vocal performances are solid, as is a pleasant musical score highlighted by the title cut. Other than some variable sound recording of the voice tracks, tech credits are good.

Often compared to GREASE being that the main character, a suave/strutting New York City hood, resembles John Travolta, animation icon Ralph Bashki's HEY GOOD LOOKIN' is more Martin Scorsese's MEAN STREETS as an adult-oriented cartoon, and for two good reasons...

The first is that the script and some of the artwork were created in the mid-70's, right after STREETS came out and where Bashki was to originally combine animated and live-action characters... leaving only a few genuine locations, from a dingy poolhall to Coney Island...

But the main similarity to the Scorsese proto-mob classic is that Richard Romanus and David Proval, who played Michael and Tony, voice the main characters Vinnie... a suave, bragging lady's man... and his psychotic sidekick Crazy, resembling a circus clown on acid...

While the visual animation is terrifically bright yet urban gritty... combining the director's COONSKIN and HEAVY TRAFFIC... it simply doesn't feel like a throwback to the 1950's, where the flashbacked story takes place...

Instead centering more on the two buddies basically just hanging around, mostly with two girls, while the violent gang aspect is less than peripheral (attempting traits from THE WARRIORS to THE WANDERERS)... and a musical singing-group side-story feels out of place...

So overall, Ralph Bashki's HEY GOOD LOOKIN' would have probably worked better as an animated short since... while there's plenty of noisy action... not much literal ground's really covered.

When "Coonskin/Streetfight" caused a load of controversy and the technical specs caused difficulty, this one sat on a shelf for WAY too long.

And it may be Bakshi's best.

This was like "Heavy Traffic" but two decades earlier. Take away the 70's lingo and bring in the greasers. Ralph seems to be exorcising a rough past with his father here. Not for the first time either.

The best part of this film is the wrecking of the 50's myth. It wasn't all great economy and capitalism. The poor existed. Gangs ran rampant. And the races were at odds. This film points that out. And points again...

The autobiographical angle shows too. Both this and "Traffic" have the struggling artist character getting heat from all around him.

This was like a JD flick but VERY serious. Getting lost in that shuffle was the worst thing that could happen to it.

Go see it.