I think unless you're willing to suspend your work-a-day life for a couple hours and get into the mindset of a 60's stoner/revolutionary/"intellectual", you should NOT bother watching this movie. You'll just find it at best boring, and at worst, offensive.
Now, I wasn't born in the 60's but I WAS a dedicated stoner, and thus first viewed this film amid a "purple haze" with some college buddies. And while many of the 60's references were completely lost on me and just left me going..."whoah...bizarre..." the stoner comedy and psychedelic adventures of horny feline Fritz spoke to me well enough to ensure this was one heck of an enjoyable "trip" of a movie. I loved the crows as black dudes and pigs as cops - that would NEVER make it through these days. In fact, I draw a lot of enjoyment from this film and others like it, simply because they are "shocking" to my generation, who are supposedly so sexually enlightened and all that, when in fact most people my age are conservative in the extreme and the worst part is they don't even know it! Ah, whatever, I'll dispense with the politics.
Fritz begins with our feline hero hangin in Central Park with his stoner buds playing guitar to impress the chicks and the "phonies". When they fail to impress some cool chicks (a cat, a bunny, one appears to be a dog...) who prefer the "jive-talkin" negro crow nearby, Fritz ditches the guys and persuades the girls to accompany him to a party, with the promise of "finding truth and enlightenment", but all Fritz wants to do is bang the pretty little things, and who could blame him? They go to this green guy's house (I can never figure out what he is - at first he looks like a lizard, but he's got a fluffy tail and a snout...so i have no idea...the fact that he's green doesn't help) but he explains that they are in the middle of a session (a pot-smoking term meaning a round of smoking sort of) so Fritz must use the bathroom for his "truth seeking" with the girls. Well, kudos to Fritz he gets the girls naked and giggly in about 3 seconds and proceeds to have his wicked way, before he's rudely interrupted by the other guys in the apartment who want in on this "truth and elightenment" as well! My fave line in this bit is the blue dude: "You ever make it with a aardvark? We're endangered y'know..." The second act sees Fritz encounter Duke, a Harlem crow, in a bar, who quite rightly tells Fritz understanding the "racial crisis" from the black perspective is impossible for a "cat" like him, because he is NOT black (or in this case, he is NOT a crow).
Anyway, in a particularly bizarre sequence Fritz trips out after having about 8 joints stuffed into his mouth at once, then has sex with a big crow chick, during which he suddenly exclaims that everything is clear to him now and he must tell people about "the revolution". O...kay. His ravings on top of a parked car start a riot (not a difficult thing to do apparently if you lived in Harlem in the late 60's, according to some sources) during which his friend Duke is killed, and he is forced to go into hiding coz the fuzz are now looking for him. Duke's death scene is hypnotic and one of the more effective bits in the movie, with the pool-balls bouncing to the sound of a beating heart...really inspired little bit of animation, I thought.
Fritz is found by his girlfriend Winston, who persuades him to go with her out into the desert and head for Frisco. Fritz digs the idea and they hit the road.
No sooner have they run out of gas, Fritz ditches Winston to head off into the desert on his own, hooking up with my favourite character - the heroin-addled, psychotic, harley-riding blue bunny revolutionary, who ends almost every sentence with a deadpan "ha ha" and his horse-girlfriend, who takes a liking to Fritz. These are crazy fundamentalist hippies who want to blow stuff up fighting "the establishment" etc, and they quickly rope Fritz into a scheme to blow up a power station. Suffice it to say Fritz reaches an epiphany (albeit at a pretty late stage) and, well, I wont give away the ending...but it's pretty cool, weird and funny.
I don't know how successful as satire Fritz the Cat is, because I didn't live through the decade it is set in, but I can say it is a great little snapshot of New York, circa late 60's early 70's, especially the slideshow of pictures over the end credits. It is also a reminder that although we have come far in things like IT technology and medicine, etc, our "morals" and "values" have, if anything, gone BACKWARDS since 1972. So roll a big fat one, get some of your hippie friends over, and "seek some truth". 79 minutes well spent.
Now, I wasn't born in the 60's but I WAS a dedicated stoner, and thus first viewed this film amid a "purple haze" with some college buddies. And while many of the 60's references were completely lost on me and just left me going..."whoah...bizarre..." the stoner comedy and psychedelic adventures of horny feline Fritz spoke to me well enough to ensure this was one heck of an enjoyable "trip" of a movie. I loved the crows as black dudes and pigs as cops - that would NEVER make it through these days. In fact, I draw a lot of enjoyment from this film and others like it, simply because they are "shocking" to my generation, who are supposedly so sexually enlightened and all that, when in fact most people my age are conservative in the extreme and the worst part is they don't even know it! Ah, whatever, I'll dispense with the politics.
Fritz begins with our feline hero hangin in Central Park with his stoner buds playing guitar to impress the chicks and the "phonies". When they fail to impress some cool chicks (a cat, a bunny, one appears to be a dog...) who prefer the "jive-talkin" negro crow nearby, Fritz ditches the guys and persuades the girls to accompany him to a party, with the promise of "finding truth and enlightenment", but all Fritz wants to do is bang the pretty little things, and who could blame him? They go to this green guy's house (I can never figure out what he is - at first he looks like a lizard, but he's got a fluffy tail and a snout...so i have no idea...the fact that he's green doesn't help) but he explains that they are in the middle of a session (a pot-smoking term meaning a round of smoking sort of) so Fritz must use the bathroom for his "truth seeking" with the girls. Well, kudos to Fritz he gets the girls naked and giggly in about 3 seconds and proceeds to have his wicked way, before he's rudely interrupted by the other guys in the apartment who want in on this "truth and elightenment" as well! My fave line in this bit is the blue dude: "You ever make it with a aardvark? We're endangered y'know..." The second act sees Fritz encounter Duke, a Harlem crow, in a bar, who quite rightly tells Fritz understanding the "racial crisis" from the black perspective is impossible for a "cat" like him, because he is NOT black (or in this case, he is NOT a crow).
Anyway, in a particularly bizarre sequence Fritz trips out after having about 8 joints stuffed into his mouth at once, then has sex with a big crow chick, during which he suddenly exclaims that everything is clear to him now and he must tell people about "the revolution". O...kay. His ravings on top of a parked car start a riot (not a difficult thing to do apparently if you lived in Harlem in the late 60's, according to some sources) during which his friend Duke is killed, and he is forced to go into hiding coz the fuzz are now looking for him. Duke's death scene is hypnotic and one of the more effective bits in the movie, with the pool-balls bouncing to the sound of a beating heart...really inspired little bit of animation, I thought.
Fritz is found by his girlfriend Winston, who persuades him to go with her out into the desert and head for Frisco. Fritz digs the idea and they hit the road.
No sooner have they run out of gas, Fritz ditches Winston to head off into the desert on his own, hooking up with my favourite character - the heroin-addled, psychotic, harley-riding blue bunny revolutionary, who ends almost every sentence with a deadpan "ha ha" and his horse-girlfriend, who takes a liking to Fritz. These are crazy fundamentalist hippies who want to blow stuff up fighting "the establishment" etc, and they quickly rope Fritz into a scheme to blow up a power station. Suffice it to say Fritz reaches an epiphany (albeit at a pretty late stage) and, well, I wont give away the ending...but it's pretty cool, weird and funny.
I don't know how successful as satire Fritz the Cat is, because I didn't live through the decade it is set in, but I can say it is a great little snapshot of New York, circa late 60's early 70's, especially the slideshow of pictures over the end credits. It is also a reminder that although we have come far in things like IT technology and medicine, etc, our "morals" and "values" have, if anything, gone BACKWARDS since 1972. So roll a big fat one, get some of your hippie friends over, and "seek some truth". 79 minutes well spent.