Saw Hey Good Lookin' (1982), an edgy animated film from enfant terrible Ralph Bakshi, creator of American Pop, Fritz the Cat, and Coonskin. The title of that last film should clue you in to the kind of creator Ralph Bakshi is: crude, boundary-pushing, daring. His films try to depict a warts-and-all look at some adventure. Almost all of his films have parts that have aged very badly.
This one is in the usual Bakshi style: very loose, very natural, you can almost see the actors in the sound booth, kidding around and interrupting each other. It follows Jimmy who is a wanna-be leader of a gang of greasers in 1950s New York. They run afoul of another gang and now must "rumble". So Jimmy spends the film trying to drum up enthusiasm for the rumble while also constantly smooching his love interest. It's like Saturday Night Fever meets West Side Story, only a cartoon.
It was a ripping yarn, clocking in at a brief 77 minutes. There are bits where it drags a hair or suffers from awkward pacing, but it always zips along, at the very least pushing grotesque, Triplets of Belleville-level grotesques in your face. The main character looks the most attractive of the lot and even he looks oddly simian at times. A good, strange film, as expected from this creator.
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