Hey Good Lookin'

Uneven, Worth Seeing for Bakshi Fans
Animator Ralph Bakshi's feature films are a wildly uneven assortment of psychedelic colors, ethnic stereotypes and ribald humor - elements of which haven't quite translated into the 21st century. After breaking out with "Fritz the Cat" and "Heavy Traffic," Bakshi found himself being courted by major studios, but two of his subsequent projects - "Coonskin," produced for Paramount, and the Warner Bros.-backed "Hey Good Lookin'" - would end up being shuttled off to another studio in the case of the former and delayed for years in the case of the latter.

In fact, HEY GOOD LOOKIN' (75 mins., 1982, R) was originally produced as a live-action/animated mix in the mid `70s. According to reports, indifferent test screenings and the controversy over "Coonskin" caused Warner to shelve the project for years, during which time Bakshi generated box-office paydirt with "Wizards" and his "Lord of the Rings" animated adaptation. Looking to capitalize on the latter's success, Warner opted to...

It's about time!
Hey good lookin' has been a cult favourite for some time now. Now warner archive is finally putting it out on dvd-r, but better than nothing. Artwork is great. at least they use original poster art. Now the quality here is, or seems to be stricken from an original negetive, It is sharp and colors are strong, specially crazy's red hair. But the transfer is plaqued with constant little white specs throughout, but oh well, you will get use to it. At least its sharp and miles better than whats on you tube now. Also intresting is that we get the original warner bros logo at the beginning which makes me thinks its from an old film element, not a direct copy from a later pressing VHS. (which uses a newer warner logo). By all means for fans of the film, a must have.. The disc includes a trailer which only shows one scene and nothing else..

Forced into widescreen aspect
The video quality in this is excellent, the only bad thing about it is they cropped the top and bottom of the image off to force it into widescreen aspect ratio so your losing picture as a result.

For instance at the 3:50 part of the movie where the main character punches the trash can lid, your supposed to see bottoms of windows at the top and their legs spread with some background at the bottom. They cropped the entire top and bottom of the picture off for the entire length of the movie to make it look like widescreen so their no longer in the picture.

If it weren't for that I'd love it to death so it only gets 3 stars from me. I would have preferred all of the picture still in tact with a 4:3 aspect release. Not cut the image off the top and bottom and make it a forced 16:9 release.

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