American Pop

This animated feature film was released in 1981. It was an animated feature with adult orientated content. Very much like the movie Heavy Metal. Essentially it was R rated content in the animated world and for that alone it is worth watching to see how a Hollywood animated film would handle making an animated film for adults. This was before Japanese anime really took hold in the American film market. The animation is also very crude and lacks background depth that we take fro granted in animation today. It weaves together a great story of how an immigrant comes to America escaping great peril and how despite his talent suffers several tragedies that essentially leads him to adopt a life of crime. It then follows his son, his grandson and his great grandson over the course of a roughly forty year period. There are times when the film's story works remarkably well and then there are times when it falls flat on it's face. The film is anchored but it's soundtrack which does serve as a great historical account of how American music developed into Rock N Roll even if some of the song choices are spotty at best. However, other song choices work remarkably well. The film's plot does serve as a good anchor of American history leading us through early European immigration from the turn of the twentieth century through the prohibition movement to World War I and World War II as well as into the 1960s Hippie generation. What is very strange about the plot is that eventually the film's heroine achieves his success by being a drug dealer and this is how he is able to transition to another life. All I can say is that there are many strange themes that Hollywood tackled especially in films from the 1960's onward through the early 1980s. This film is worth checking out for a variety of reasons even though at times the plot does fall flat on it's face. This film despite these flaws does hold a special place in my heart because as a boy I vividly remember seeing the film advertised on several tapes that I rented from Blockbuster video and as such it become a film that at some point in my life I had to see because the visual imagery I saw in the previews as a kid fascinated me. Check out American Pop.