Review of Wizards (1977) by Dora Q — 11 Feb 2008

Ralph Bakshi did some of the neatest and most angry animated films ever. His earliest film was a political adaptation of Robert Crumb's FRITZ THE CAT. Following that was HEAVY TRAFFIC, COONSKIN, and now, this.

His first family film. This was a film that I used to love watching when I was a small lad. Watching it today is completely surreal and emotional. This is a film that really helped define me and what I loved about being a kid.

The film, in question, is a Fantasy action film about a nuclear holocaust that destroys the world, leaving very little left. Technology is long forgotten and magic is adopted. There were two wizards born to a mother.

A good wizard and a bad wizard. Thousands of years later, they grow old and must do battle when the evil wizard stumbles on some old footage of Hitler's Nazi propaganda and decides to brainwash an army of mutants to do his bidding and destroy the peaceful countryside.

Joining the good wizard on his quest to defeat the evil wizard are a fairy, an elf named Weehawk, and an ex-assassin cyborg robot named Peace, who is incidentally my favorite character. The film is brilliant because, unlike the usual animated family films that have stuff like talking animals and stuff, this film actually gives a sense of the characters genuinely respecting and caring about each other, despite the circumstances.

Their struggle across the land to the evil wizard is one full of heartache and unpredictable predicaments. The good characters are quite beautifully crafted and imaginative. Ralph Bakshi was known for having the female characters in his animated films to be quite cute and funny.

The characters in this are no exception. The main female character is a slightly pudgy, smart, adorable, and extremely memorable character. Likewise, his male characters were suitably boyish. The wizards both have a kind of unsurpassed attitude for each other that you can totally sense from their first appearances and their words.

They both look completely different from each other. You can tell which one's good and which one's evil. The good one looks kind of like a short version of Santa Clause, with a fat little red nose poking out under his cap.

The evil one looks real skinny, with skeleton arms and green skin. It's funny to just look at the good one, but the evil one is quite nasty at times. In one scene, he orders for his newborn baby to be killed because he was born a mutant.

The film is quite brutal at times. There's lots of blood and the scenes in which the Nazi propaganda is shown to all the innocent little creatures is quite heart wrenching to watch, especially their looks of pure terror.

The film uses an extremely intense rotoscoping technique in which the battle scenes are played out in front of the background image, really illuminating a sense of the fog of battle. The war scenes are extraordinary.

There is a real sense of suspense that permeates throughout the scenes that really help define the movie in a much deeper, stronger sort of way. The characters are so good. All of their characteristics are immediately established right from the get-go, and they don't break out of character for even one second throughout the film.

The cyborg robot assassin Peace got my heart pumping from the first scene with his little murder sprees, yet there was something immensely likable about who he was. He obviously has no choice to continue murdering innocent characters, but the fact that the power of magic was able to change that in this film really put a smile on my face.

The viewers are given a sense of hope very early on, and this helps to better establish the progress of the film. This film is incredibly moving for an animated film. This and HEAVY METAL were my favorites when I was a lot younger.

Watching them now, HEAVY METAL, as good as it is, is dated. WIZARDS, however, will go down as a timeless masterpiece in animation history.