The story of four generations of a Russian Jewish immigrant family of musicians whose careers parallel the history of American popular music in the 20th century.
Director: Ralph Bakshi
Stars: Mews Small, Ron Thompson, Jerry Holland.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082009/
Watched online, mediocre print, blurry.
49 songs in the Soundtracks, almost all without performers, most played partially.
I found this very interesting for a while. Since I like watching old films to absorb some impressions of the culture of the time, this does a nice job of sampling the decades in which films were made. In fact, some of the scenes are recognizable as being copied (via rotoscope) from extant live action films. Examples: the Lindy Hoppers looked incredibly familiar, and it was nice that this film used only 1 couple, where most scenes of LH's would have either multiple couples or swaying dancers in the background. Also, one segment was clearly the Nicholas Brothers, albeit in costumes they never wore. IMDb trivia claims there's a chunk of James Cagney dancing from Public Enemy ('31); since the animation avoided copying the faces, just copying the movement, and I don't know that film so well, I wouldn't have caught that.
When we got to the 3rd generation, and we made more abrupt transitions among music genres, and the character was a drug dealer/user, I lost some interest. And, let's face it, that character was someone from my own lifetime, so I am less interested in that anyway.
IMDb trivia: "Except for a few bits of live-action stock footage and the still drawings in the opening credits, the movie is entirely rotoscoped." And in my opinion, not done terribly well. It looks too much like early Disney, but maybe worse because they did fewer animation drawings? The motion i slow and stylized, where original animation can be sharper and more lively when done well.
But the choice of music was pretty good; unfortunately, it looks like the Soundtracks are not in chronological order. I didn't check if they matched the order of the end credits.
I'd like to see this again, and maybe my rating will change on 2nd viewing. But for now I found it interesting and different.
BTW, I remember the Bakshi Mighty Mouse (and the original MM), but don't think I've seen his other work (Fritz the Cat, others). For the record, Bakshi was born in Haifa (Palestine, now Israel) in '38.
Columbia & more, dir. Bakshi; 7-
