Coonskin

Coonskin (1975)

Runtime: 83 minutes

Directed by: Ralph Bakshi

Starring: The appearance (and also the voices) of Scatman Crothers, Philip Michael Thomas, Barry White, and Charles Gordone

From: Bryanston Distributing

This is an awkward review to link to on Twitter!

For a few years now I’ve done just that via the option that Letterboxd has. Well, I know that some of my mutuals on Twitter will be wondering “WTF?” when they see that I watched something called Coonskin which has a movie poster of animated figures. Way back when I’ve seen some Ralph Bakshi and while I wished it wasn’t so puerile so often, those movies were still interesting. Even though I’ve known of this for years now and I thought about giving it a shot, knowing that the movie is full of racial stereotypes that were supposed to be satirical… it always gave me pause until I finally took the plunge and saw it on the Criterion Channel.

Honestly, I wish I saw the satirical “brilliance” and “insightful commentary” that many people-and even the director-believe is in Coonskin. What I saw instead was REALLY puerile and all the horrible stereotypes that the Black cartoon characters were… that was just uncomfortable more than anything else for a dumb white guy like me. Besides live action and animation being blended together, the all live action tale of Scatman Crothers telling Philip Michael Thomas a fable involving ripoff Son of the South caricatures as they… take over Harlem and deal with both corrupt cops and the Mafia?! What was the point, exactly? Why was that story even told as they wait for two men-one of whom was Barry White!-to try and bust them out of jail?

I wasn’t entertained except for some moments, such as nice imagery at times. The music (from the fabled Chico Hamilton) is at least good and it was rather surreal hearing Crothers using the N word-oh, and speaking of that, that is uttered so often it was like this was directed by Tarantino... Besides there being those horrifying caricatures of Black people, it doesn’t get any better with the portrayal of homosexuals. Honestly, I am being awfully generous in noting the interesting moments and the cast & not giving this a worse than average rating. There’s always the chance that when I revisit those Bakshi pictures sometime later in the year, that they will have aged poorly for me. Overall, I am not “offended” by the movie due to how offensive it is. Rather, I just roll my eyes at how it tries SO hard to be offensive between the language, the stereotypes, and all the cartoon nudity that just doesn’t titillate or even impress when there’s anime for those cheap thrills.

Again I ask, what was the point of this? The story didn’t enthrall me, that I am certain of. My biggest feeling: disappointment as I was NOT expecting to dislike this as much as I did.