Coonskin (1975)
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Coonskin Movie Review
Coonskin is a 1975 animated film directed by Ralph Bakshi. It is another one of his annoying urban movies which did not age well at all.
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“Those queer sons of a bitches!“
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First of all, in terms of the quality, it’s not as good as ‘Fritz’, but Coonskin is definitely better than ‘Heavy Traffic’ which is much more frustrating than this flick. This is a mediocre movie which has its point, albeit the point did not come across all too well in the finished product. He wanted to showcase how stupid stereotypes are by accentuating them and making all groups of people highly stereotypical including blacks, whites and gay people. But he did it in such a way that it’s rather obvious and bombastic.
I did love how he portrayed the mafia terribly and how the director basically stated that the crime movies from the early seventies are really irresponsible for basically glorifying the mafia. But the characters themselves are so incredibly underutilized, boring and forgettable that they’re not worth talking about more. Some black characters are fun, but most are not all that memorable. The voice acting is also not great. It’s solid, but far from great.
The animation is solid for what it is. The accentuated body parts are well drawn, all the stereotypes are well conveyed and the overall animation is mostly fluid and good for its time. I just wish that it wasn’t so dark in color. As for the live-action scenes, they are so weak that they hurt the movie by making it halt to a stop how boring those segments are.
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Coonskin is obsessed with crossdressers once again and I do believe that instead of them, they should have maybe used some other groups such as women which are thoroughly underused here. The movie is very repetitive and uninspired as it basically takes elements from both of its predecessors. Yes, it’s his most progressive film in a way, but it’s also his most unoriginal one. The dialogue is mostly weak, the storyline is particularly shallow and the movie is dull even for its short runtime.
Coonskin is definitely better than Bakshi’s previous effort and it does have a point, but making fun of stereotypes could have been done in a less bombastic manner. The animation is solid, but the plot is mostly repetitive and uninspired, the characters are very mediocre, the dialogue should have been better and the lack of a stronger structure is problematic.
