A hidden gem from the animated genre, AMERICAN POP is an experience like none other! Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment.If you love movies, it’s always such a thrill to discover hidden gems of the 20th century. AMERICAN POP is one of them. I have one reaction to this film: WOW. This is an animated movie from 1981, and my biggest regret in watching it is that I did so on my computer instead of a large movie screen. This is a film so visceral, imaginative, colorful, eye-popping, trippy, hypnotic, and daring that it deserves to only be shown in movie theaters. All these days later, I can’t get the colors of the film out of my mind. This movie is a phantasmagoria of music, drugs, Judaism, sex, violence, and the American experience. WOW, indeed.
If my pre-COVID memory is correct, PJFM actually considered showing AMERICAN POP at the Lightbox Film Center some years ago, back when it was located in University City. I had never heard of the movie, but from seeing still images, I was intrigued. Was this a kids movie? What was with the crazy imagery and unrealistically drawn, surreal-looking human characters? Were those gangsters? Sidenote: AMERICAN POP is not a kids movie. Oh no. There are drugs. There’s profanity. There is violence with over-the-top torrents of blood. There are scantily clad burlesque dancers and posters of nude people on walls. I was flabbergasted to discover that the movie was distributed by Columbia Pictures, one of the many historic studio conglomerates in Hollywood. This doesn’t seem like any kind of film a big distributor would secure. It’s like an underground movie, an experimental journey that you expect to see in a museum or bootlegged on an old VHS tape.
The movie itself still seems underrated nowadays. I read about movies all the time and don’t recall seeing news of restored, 35mm showings of AMERICAN POP playing anywhere. It received mostly decent reviews when it debuted on February 13, 1981, but its box office turnout was pretty low. What was this strange-looking wonder of a film? A lack of big movie stars may have led to its anonymity, as well as its eclectic genre. Let’s remember that adult animated films are still rare to this day, even though many of them are simply amazing.
Nevertheless, all these years later, a lot of film critics have come out of the woodwork to revere Ralph Bakshi’s musical.
“This is one of those flawless wonders where every single frame is perfect,” says Michael Talbot-Haynes of Film Threat. “The arrangements and composition of the images are breathtaking to the point of your lungs collapsing.”
The animation of AMERICAN POP is like 3D. Characters walk in front of the frame while objects and people around them stay still. The animation – all hand-drawn, of course – is mixed with archival footage of rock concerts and various other snapshots of 20th century America; people walking on the crowded New York streets, soldiers fighting in the war, etc. Viewers may laugh at how unrealistic these characters look. I understand that, but this is also pre-Pixar. This is pre-CGI animation. In AMERICAN POP¸ Bakshi, a man who made many other animated films, including The Lord of the Rings (1978) and the X-rated Fritz the Cat (1972), is in a genre of his own. He is a true auteur. It doesn’t matter if these characters’ anatomies look strikingly unreal. We are meant to get lost in the mindlessly insane world of AMERICAN POP and not contempt over the accuracy of human anatomy. Together, we should pay tribute to the overwhelmingly talented animation department, the people who made 700,000 – 800,000 individual drawings for this movie. (Fact: AMERICAN POP took nearly two and a half years to make.)
So what is this bizarre movie about? In general, it’s an epic about four generations of an immigrant family of musicians. Are you ready? We start off in the late 1890s in the Russian Empire. The Royal Cossacks, defenders of the peace for the Czar, are instigating a pogrom in town. Zalmie, a young Jewish boy, and his mother are forced to flee, while the father, a rabbi, is murdered. Together, Zalmie and his mother arrive in New York City where the curious boy skips his cheder lessons and begins working for Louie, a performer at a burlesque house.
Things take a sharp turn very fast in AMERICAN POP. Zalmie’s mother is killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Some years go by and Zalmie, now an aspiring singer, is injured fighting in World War I. He falls for a stripper named Bella, gets her pregnant, and then gets in over his head when he uses the money for his wedding from Nicky Palumbo, a mob boss. Something…. very shocking happens, as a result, which I won’t say.
Cut to many years later and a new character enters the picture, Benny, the son of Zalmie and Bella. Like his father, he too wants to become a musician and also goes to war where he has a very particular encounter with a Nazi and piano. Cut to years later again and we meet Tony, the son of Benny, a young man who attracts a rock group in California. Throughout ALL of AMERICAN POP¸ there is a lot of crazy imagery. A lot of music. A lot of drugs. A lot of hit classic songs like “California Dreamin’” and “Somebody to Love.” A lot of death. A lot of…what’s another word for “craziness”? This is quite a movie, and I’ve already given away too much.
Bakshi, an American Jew born in Haifa before the creation of Israel, grew up in Brooklyn after his family escaped the impending World War II. You can tell, just from experiencing AMERICAN POP¸ that this is a deeply personal movie for him. It’s for anyone who grew up in America during the wild years of the 20th century. It’s nostalgic, in a sense, but I think it’s meant to be more than a personal story of a generational family. Bakshi wants you to feel the music and touch the animation like it’s popping out of your screen. This is not a story: it’s an EXPERIENCE. A wild, theatrical experience where your eyes get lost in the endlessly moving colors and songs.
Bakshi has made a trippy, utterly fantastical film. I may not have understood every moment. I may have gasped many times at how unpredictable moments got, but I was never bored during this movie, and I guarantee that you won’t be too.
AMERICAN POP is now available to stream on Tubi, Pluto TV, and Vudu.