American Pop

Watching the fluid movements of the animated characters in Ralph Bakshi's epic journey through American popular music, you'd be hard pressed to guess the film's date. In fact, the only real clue is in the music itself, which ends in the late '70s. New to video (it did air on cable many years ago), this 1980 pop saga follows four generations, from Zalmie, a turn-of-the-century immigrant kid who embarks on a career in vaudeville and gets tied up with the mob, to Little Pete, an orphan who parlays a drug dealership with rock stars into an eventual recording contract. Sex, drugs, and war are deftly intertwined both in the character's personal lives and in the music itself, which ranges from Cole Porter to Pat Benatar. What's most impressive however is Bakshi's often flawless renditions of people dancing--seemingly effortless verisimilitude that the best computer-aided design programs in the world today can't yet touch. Recommended. (R. Pitman)