American Pop - 5 Stars out of 5 stars

This is by far my favorite adult cartoon.Releases in 1981 at 96 minutes by animator Ralph Bakshi who is a immigrant..The story is broad and flows over 4 generations and is told with the love I believe only a immigrant has for the dream and hope of this huge and diverse country. It starts with a young Jewish lad and his mom who flee the progroms in Czarist Russia,for NYC, after the father is killed while singing a prayer.Mom gets a job at the Triangle shirt factory and young Zalmie wanders Tin Pan Alley and hooks up with Louie a street smart hustler of music lyrics amongst other things.From there we're taken through Mom's death in the fire,Louie taking Zalmie under his wing like his own son/brother and well WW1,marriage ,second generation son Bennie,third Generation son,Tony who movies to LA at the hight of the 60's drug era while fathering a son on a one night stand in Kansas and finally 4th generation Pete who returns to NYC with Tony.Throughout each generations music is portrayed as in a cute little scene in the final with Pete who is now a drug pushing aspiring Punk singer passing a store front in NYC where a old Jewish guy is singing a prayer.Pete stops outsides and sort of snaps his fingers to the Jewish prayers beat coming full cycle from Zelmies dad singing at the time of his death. Now my only issue is the first story is a bit long compared to the other three but perhaps in Bakshi's mind that was need to set up the scope for the future.And wide that becomes,too much so to cite here.However one of my other favorite scenes is when Tony returns from a beatnik poetry reading in Greenwich village,his 3 half siblings are watching TV and hold there heads in there hands as he babbling to them,finally he says you catch them brains there falling out of your heads because of watching TV and thats when he takes the car and heads out west.It's on that trip he has the one night stand that fathers Pete but he won't know that for quite awhile.Tony never knew Bennie his father because he was conceived and then Bennie went to WW11 and was killed.His mom however later remarried but always carried a torch for Bennie. It's a beautiful sprawling tail of the diversity of life even within one family that only THIS country can offer.Its sad,tragic,but also hopeful,just as life truly is and the music,well there is little to complain about.A full rich group of artists of the time.Here one may argue,but I feel thats only because there is so much to choose from in reality.The trailer URL is below the pix.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1739981081/