Streetfight

Twelve years after its initial release and subsequent suppression (under the title Coonskin), controversial animator Ralph Bakshi's penetrating look at ghetto life comes to the small screen. Mixing live action with animation, Bakshi frames his story by introducing two convicts getting ready to break out of jail (Scatman Crothers and Philip Michael Thomas). While waiting for the getaway car to arrive, Scatman relates the adventures of a modern-day Brer Rabbit, Bear, and Fox in Harlem. Streetfight is being billed as a film with something to offend everyone. This is basically true. At the same time, we feel that it offends everyone equally. Black revolutionaries, white rednecks, gay Italian gangsters, and preachers of whatever persuasion, all specifically walk the satiric plank. On a more general level, the subjects of race, sex, drugs, religion, justice, family, and power are the real under lying targets for Bakshi's brand of humor/social commentary. Streetfight is outrageous. Outrageously funny. Outrageously violent. Often outrageously intelligent. If you buy it, just make darn sure that your technical services department doesn't look at the animated characters on the box cover, and process it as a kid's film. It's not. It has, however, been added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film. (Interestingly enough, Bakshi is not 'pushing' the film. In fact, he doesn't even want to talk about it. This may have something to do with his present work: Saturday morning "Mighty Mouse" cartoons. Welcome to commercialism, Ralph.) Recommended.