thedevilyouknow00

I'm kind of ashamed to be writing this because it means I took the time to watch it. And it gets worse when you realize I'm taking more time to comment on it. Oh well, can't say you weren't warned. If the other reviews didn't slap some sense into you and cause you watch something useful like CITIZEN KANE or porn, then I've no sympathy for you. Normally, I would express my admiration of the nudity, attractive girls, gore, overall trashiness, nudity, callous and gleeful disdain of reality and nudity that a movie with a title of ATTACK GIRLS' SWIM TEAM might engender. Except... this movie may possess such attributes, but it's not done very well. An equivalent effect might be that of watching your parents dry-humping while talking dirty to each other (or so I'd assume- I've no experience to draw from, readers feel free to correct me at your leisure). You can't really discuss plot or characterization, except to say that the aforementioned undead or zombies don't appear until far too late and when they do, there's only about four or five. And they're in an all too brief scene of bloodletting... okay I'm bored with the zombies... but there is nudity! And a faux lesbian scene with incestuous undertones which would be worth a quick fast-forward to... but really, once that's done, it's a pretty dreary affair. The idea of 'so bad it's good' is always a dicey proposition to a viewer, but it never reaches the outlandish depths non-quality needs to be entertaining. It's just bad. It can't even muster the necessary 'movie magic' required to make you believe the whole production wasn't shot at an abandoned building with a couple of non-professionals on their lunch hour. And for all the hype of the title, the 'Swim Team' doesn't form until way too late and it then doesn't even do that much. Blaming this as an amateur effort seems overly cruel and is inaccurate- amateurs are at least striving. This thing is lazy. Kids, don't waste your time. Find something else. You're reading this on the internet. Something better is a click away.

And you'll love every second. I could comment at length about the excellent and fast director provided by the directors and animators, or the sound pattern and music that never lets up and is determined to not let a second of silence infect the pictures, but really, the reason this makes such a great cartoon is probably because there's no way it will ever get a DVD release today. Imagine every stereotype the Greatest Generation ever engaged in, and now set it to the music that same generation bopped out to before getting on the boat to go over there. And here's the thing: we have to laugh at 'Coal Black...' We have to laugh at it because the energy of piece never lets up. It starts out fast with quick music and dialog and keeps a beat- the pictures move in concert with the various ebbs and flows of the music. It's poetry in animated motion. And it's funny. The stereotypes are so silly and unrealistic that what gets the suits nervous make us laugh. We've got your Welfare Queen, your Dark Chocolate hottie, your Swingin' Playa, and your seven soul brothers. And an offer to kill Japs for free! This could only be misconstrued by the most humorless critic as insulting. They would have to so buried in their opinions and others' opinions that they would be prevented from seeing the beat and rhythm inside the cartoon's 7 minutes. You can't take it seriously. You can't take away a world view from it. All you can do, is laugh.