Irishchatter At the beginning, I absolutely loved the music, it was so catchy that you can dance all day! However, I think the animation and the storyline was a bit downhill. I thought the drawings of the women looked like they needed work. I have to say, not all drawings were that terrible but they needed to be spiced up pretty badly! I don't expect it 3-D as we have nowadays, at least the animators should draw better then that!The storyline was OK, it did make sense but after watching over 20 minutes of the movie, I just immediately got bored with it. I think the whole thing didn't make sense to me! I'm only giving this a 3 because I liked the funny images especially McDonald's on the moon at the beginning and the jazz music. That's all I have to say about watching this. ...

gangstahippie American Pop is a very interesting and underrated animated film.It has a fairly good storyline and also due to the technique of "rotoscoping", the film has great animation as well...especially for 1981! The film shows four generations of a Russian-American family starting from the 1800's and ending in the 1980's.It shows the different musical talents of the family members which also show the era of music they live in.It also shows other historical moments that happen during their time such as World War II.American Pop is a very good animated film.Definitely one of Bakshi's best and his most serious work.Do not expect a movie like "Fritz The Cat", this is a serious animated-drama.Worth watching if you can find it.

moonspinner55 Veteran animation director Ralph Bakshi never quite found his footing in creating commercial art for the cinema--and although he has ambition and chutzpah, Bakshi doesn't have the touch for making his subjects engaging or embraceable (at least not by a wide movie-going public). One would think then that an animated, documentary-style journey back to the roots of popular music would be just the breakthrough Bakshi needed. Alas, this clichéd rendering--with melodramatic trimmings--is a big disappointment, with curiously stilted and awkward visuals and an embarrassingly bad score. Rags-to-riches 'plot' concerning a songwriter begins promisingly, however the script takes an early wrong turn into soap opera and the film never recovers. * from ****

DarthBill Another feature from the one & only Ralph Bakshi, champion of adult animation. The story of four men in one family trying to find their niche in the world of American music, their stories being contrasted against the evolution of American music. First is Zalmie, the immigrant who wants to be a big shot Vaudeville singer, only to be thwarted by a throat injury he gets while performing overseas in World War 1, leaving him with a raspy, guttural voice, and then gets caught up in the mafia. Next is Zalmie's son Benny, a gifted but unmotivated piano player who manages to fall in love with the daughter of a mafia boss he is forced to marry and has a child with, only to be killed while serving in World War II - but not before he fathers a son, Tony, and not before he manages to have a brief connection with the Nazi soldier who ultimately kills him through his music. Zalmie later goes to jail for his mafia connections but not before he rats out the mafia boss he worked for, as a kind of revenge for being pulled away from his true calling. The story then shifts to Benny's son Tony, who finds success with a Jefferson Airplane type band during the 1960s, only to be thwarted by a drug addiction. Tony has an illegitimate son, Pete, who, after working as a drug pusher in the 1980s, finds success by combining the singing, songwriting and piano playing abilities of his father, grandfather and great grandfather, and hits it big by recording Bob Seger's "Night Moves".Essentially a morality tale, this is an interesting but ultimately failed venture. A noble failure, but a failure nonetheless. Zalmie is probably the most sympathetic of the four men, but the film spends way too much time focusing on the cynical crack addict Tony, who is such a whiny, obnoxious little dweeb that you just don't care about him - you simply want to hit him in the mouth.Well, worth a look I suppose for the music and the atmospheric animation.