Chris Lane

The first few minutes of this movie made me think it was going to be great, or at least a spooky atmospheric film, but the many, many, many moments of “that would never happen” soon dashed those hopes. We’re expected to believe early on that after two little girls are taken by their murderer father, that the huge search for them that would ensue for weeks or months afterwards, failed to find a cabin in the woods, even though said cabin is pretty easily found by searchers a few years later? That’s about when I realized “nothing in this movie is going to make sense”, and I wasn’t mistaken. There’s promise in the underlying concept, and the acting is fine, but this film just strays too far into the realm of “that’s not how the real world works”, when it’s trying to establish events happening in the real world. It doesn’t help that the second half of the film moves away from the scary glimpses we’ve seen of “Mama” in the first half, to pretty much showing her constantly via unconvincing CGI effects. For a film that tries to milk loads of emotional content, the bad CGI, and big plot holes just let it down. By the long, boring “final confrontation” at the end of this movie, I was angry that I’d invested my time in watching it. Other than jump scares, it’s not scary, the movie’s ghost looks like she stepped out of a video game, and I just couldn’t overlook the wonky plot inconsistencies in a film taking itself so seriously.

I remember catching this on cable in the early ‘80s, which must’ve been soon after it was released. Like most of Ralph Bakshi’s movies, I always seem to go in expecting it to be better than it inevitably is, and this is no exception. This movie has a barebones plot, that probably could be summed up as “Unlikeable ‘50s street hoods have a racist gang fight, and a few people die.” That’s about it. The main protagonist “Vinnie” also has a romance with a girl named “Rozzie”, but that’s barely explored either. The animation is ugly - every character is an unattractive caricature- weird proportions, hard details on pimples, fat rolls… the characters are an ugly mess, and honestly, after a few minutes they got hard to watch. The best part of the film are the backgrounds. Also, the film takes place in the early 1950s, but the music throughout the film is bad early ‘80s pop rock. Crude humor is sprinkled throughout, but none of it is clever, and even the cartoon nudity that probably got this film its “a cartoon for adults” cred is wholly unappealing looking. So, if you want to sit through a relatively short (for a movie) feature length cartoon that is populated with ugly characters with low appeal, that takes place in the 1950s, but feels like the early ‘80s, and don’t mind a lack of plot? This film is for you. Otherwise I’d skip it. Go watch Rock and Rule instead. At least it looks cooler. Apparently, this has a troubled production, and the original concept was much more ambitious, but the dvd result here is just… not good.

This is a great film, if not for everyone. Like some have criticized, it’s not heavy on a dramatic story arc, and there’s not tons of conflict. It’s not that kind of movie. What it is, is a really great picture of a specific era and place. Like Dazed and Confused, it doesn’t have some really fleshed out, Hollywood style, conflict and resolution type plot - it’s a study of character personalities and a specific time period. And for that, this film excels. The characters are interesting enough that the minor story arcs aren’t boring. It might be more interesting to someone from Texas who remembered that era. I grew up in Montrose, so the HSPVA references were excellent, but might be missed by someone less familiar with Texas. It’s typical Linklater in that way. A great slice of life type of film, if you’re up for a period piece character study, and don’t need a heap of melodrama to stay interested. I loved it.