Why Ralph Bakshi’s ‘Hey Good Lookin” is a Wild Ride You Can’t Miss!

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#9 in my ranking of Ralph Bakshi’s filmography.

It’s no wonder that “Hey Good Lookin’” resembles the kind of work Ralph Bakshi was producing prior to “Wizards“, as it was essentially made before “Wizards” and shares a similar blend of live-action and animation, much like Robert Zemeckis’ “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?“. However, Warner Bros. initially had reservations about the concept, almost sued Bakshi, and Bakshi used his directorial earnings in subsequent years to finance an animated version himself. He released the film in 1982 following more mature storytelling projects such as “The Lord of the Rings” and “American Pop“. Compared to his recent works, “Hey Good Lookin’” feels more akin to earlier productions like “Coonskin“, “Fritz the Cat“, and “Heavy Traffic“. In terms of quality, it’s comparable as well.

In the 1950s, Vinnie (Richard Romanus) is the leader of a New York gang, known as a greaser. He develops feelings for Rozzie (Tina Bowman), a local girl, while his friend Crazy Shapiro (David Proval) starts dating Eva (Jesse Welles), a heavyset woman with a fondness for sandwiches. One evening, they both doze off on the beach only to be awakened under the boardwalk, where they observe a group of older Italian men waiting for their wives to don their bathing suits. This scene is reminiscent of the blend of exaggerated stereotypes and natural female forms that Ralph Bakshi had been using since ‘Fritz the Cat,’ but he abandoned this style in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘American Pop’ in favor of more realistic depictions of the human body.

The designs aren’t just what comes back; they share space with a type of humor that wasn’t quite fitting for an adult cartoon about mature themes, yet Bakshi seemed to believe it added zaniness and silliness. However, beneath all the comedic distractions, this narrative is essentially about courage and cowardice in the context of a race war self-initiated in 1950s New York. To reach that deeper layer, you must first navigate through a lot of tonally inconsistent comedy attempts. For instance, Roz’s father locks her up at home to prevent her from meeting Vinnie by handcuffing her to the bed, but she manages to drag the entire bed out onto the street, almost connecting with Vinnie just before he and Shapiro leave for a night on the town. The visual of Roz cuffed to the bed in the middle of the street trying to catch Vinnie’s attention is undeniably intended to be humorous, but it contrasts sharply with the focus on the violence of the 50s.

In simpler terms, the movie appears to initiate a racial conflict with an encounter between Vinnie and Shapiro with a gang on the beach, but this incident doesn’t lead to much. The interaction seems designed mainly to introduce Chaplin (Philip Michael Thomas), the leader of the gang, though the film does a poor job of it. It’s implied that Shapiro kills all the Italians, but this detail is not emphasized or revisited. The rest of the movie feels like a cheap imitation of ‘American Graffiti’, with little substance. A turning point comes when Shapiro chases and shoots two black children in the wrong neighborhood, an event that supposedly sparks the racial conflict later on, but the connection between this act and the subsequent conflict is unclear due to unnecessary complications like Solly (Angelo Grisanti), a cop who torments his son and approaches Chaplin about the death of the two kids with the intention of hunting down the suspects to take revenge. The movie has a dark undertone that conflicts poorly with its violent and juvenile humor, suggesting that the creator may not have recognized the tension between his comedy and thematic elements.

The main conflict in the movie seems unusual since it initially serves as a pretext for incorporating rotoscoping, as Bakshi utilizes real-life footage he captured of street dancers. Consequently, what was meant to be a physical fight transforms into a dance battle instead. Vinnie flees, while Shapiro gets pushed off a roof in this chaotic scene. In essence, it’s more of a jumble than anything else.

Furthermore, there’s a framing story about Vinnie returning to New York thirty years later and encountering Roz, which is intended to depict his transformation into the man he was destined to be. However, this narrative is frequently interrupted by humor that falls flat, contradicts the intended mood of the scene, and even oscillates in its purpose.

After “The Lord of the Rings” and “American Pop,” Bakshi’s latest work seems to hark back to his earlier style, characterized by disorderly, harsh, and chaotic storytelling – a style that was prevalent in his work prior to these two exceptions. The key difference is that for all other projects, Bakshi was the primary creator, while for “The Lord of the Rings” and “American Pop,” another writer imposed a more structured narrative framework on him, which largely eliminated the less appealing aspects of his humor.

Regarding the animation style, this work marks a reversion to his traditional approach. The awkward designs are paired with his struggle to effectively animate again, given that he’s mostly returned to hand-drawn animation and has abandoned rotoscoping (the occasional blend of rotoscoping with hand-drawn animation in the same scene is noticeably jarring). Furthermore, the visuals appear flat, similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. Rotoscoping provided him with a method that enhanced his animation (though he never employed an artist for shading or shadows), and his decision to revert to hand-drawn work under his direction is disheartening because it seems he stopped progressing as a visual artist around the time he was animating Mighty Mouse. However, there are some instances of shadows, which can be found in certain shots featuring the older Vinnie at the beginning. Unfortunately, these shadows look terrible due to Bakshi’s lack of understanding on how to implement them effectively.

This movie is trash. It’s not the incoherent and dull nadir that was Wizards, but it’s close.

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2025-02-11 00:31