Review of Felidae (1994) by Bonnie A — 26 Sep 2011

Dark, innovative, only for adults. Those are the major things that describes Michael Schaack's animated opus Felidae. The film mixes a classic film noir formula with mass murder, cult activities, large ranges of gore and surreal horrific nightmares and some raunchy sex all from the perspective of a society of cats.

Though I would love to mention the English voice cast by name to really say how well of a job each one did, the interesting thing is that the English-speaking cast for this film is largely unknown, since they were never added to the credits.

But besides this, the animation is much like that of hybrid of Don Bluth's An American Tail and Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat, with its own unique vibe. The story moves surprisingly well, the narration is reminiscent of Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity with a feline twist, the characters are enjoyable and three-dimensional and the interlacing of genetics, breeding, scientific experimentation (especially on animals) and the complexity of the unknown to really make something as childish as a talking cat to really treat its audience with respect to their intelligence.

Not only this, the jokes are actually pretty amusing and the dialogue is never really forced, usually something very evident in much of animated films in general. All in all, one of the best and most overlooked animated movies of the 1990s World Animation Renaissance.