Review of Coonskin (1975) by Wedstarfish 8 — 04 Jul 2017

Coonskin is a movie I have always wanted to review but because of the extremely mixed reviews i've heard about it, I never checked it out until a couple of days ago. Blending outstanding animation with rather fantastic live action backgrounds directed by one of the best animators of all time, Coonskin centers around a fable animated tale told by a old prisoner that focuses around three African Amercian man: Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear, and Brother Fox, who team up together to rise to the top charts of Mafia related crime in the underground streets of 70's Harlem.

The movie, first of all, hands down, is extremely unique, and outstandingly clever. The movie takes an extremely interesting storyline and blends it with a very complex style of animation and live action, all mixed together, in a bag, just like this movie, because honestly, this movie is a mess.

With a runtime of 1 hour and 22 minutes, even that is way too long to carry this movie on for. If about maybe 15 minutes was cut out of the movie, it would no doubt be better. However, that wouldn't fix the constant cutback to trippy acid scenes and human characters dancing that takes up way more than 22 minutes of this movie.

It wasn't extremely disturbing either, even though big black men getting violently raped isn't my thing. It just was that the trippy, acid, rape, sex filled, gory scenes took up a lot of this movie, and throughout almost every single one, I really wish that they would just cut back to the tale I was into intensely that was ruined by a cutback to a trippy scene or unneeded live action.

With the movie having a outstanding concept of animation and live action backgrounds, the movie edges way too hard to pinpoint out that the movie is rated R, it's animated, and it has live action, that sometimes, looks like complete shit.

There's one scene in this movie that shows two human characters talking to the animated characters, and it looks so terribly shitty that I really just wanted the movie to end. The thing is, they never cut back to Brother Rabbit and his rather interesting subplot.

Instead, the rest of the movie is unneeded acid scenes that are filled with edges of sex, drugs, and over the top, brutal violence to shock people for a couple of seconds. The movid has no end to be honest.

On a postive note, besides the annoying acid cutback scenes, pinpoints that it's an R rated movie, the sometimes shitty live action, and no real concluding ending, it's very entertaining. There's, believe it or not, so many scenes that work great in this movie.

The shootout live action scene on the way to the prison was intense and felt, shockingly, real. The shootout scene in the bar was the best scene out of the entire movie. The scene in the police station, the graveyard scene, the Miss Amercia scenes, their all great, but almost all these scenes, that are supposed to get you on the thrill ride that this movie is trying to take you on, is ruined by cutback scenes that take your interest away very quickly.

It is a very entertaining, outstanding blend of live action backgrounds and animation with a strong, inpactful message, but not great overall.