Don't listen to the negative reviews

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I only just now ran across this film on IMDb because for years, I couldn't remember its title. I first saw it when I was around the age of 10 in the mid eighties. I picked it up at the video rental store thinking it was a kids animated movie. I didn't get the dark humor and adult themes but the melancholy certainly came through loud and clear. I would feel depressed after watching it. And yet I loved it at the same time. I was (and am) a weird kid :) The film obviously suffered from a mismatched marketing campaign. Had it received the "independant animated feature" -type of advertising and presented as a mature satire, maybe reactions would have been a little different. But it's difficult to say, since the Broadway musical it was based on didn't fare very well either. I have yet to go back and watch it as an adult but will definitely do that next chance I get. For a long time, I was very confused by this film. It's definitely a mixed bag. There are some dark themes and yet the animation style is rather juvenile and visually similar to that of Hanna-Barbera.I think most people would feel confused by this film. It seems as though it's trying to be several different things and none of these themes seem to blend together too well. IMO, it seems much less random when one considers its background. According to Wikipedia, the characters of Mehitabel and Archy originate from a series of newspaper columns written by Don Marquis in the 1910's and 1920's for the New York Evening Sun. They served as fictional social commentary.Later, a musical was written and recorded in the 1950's and sold as part of a Columbia Masterworks series. A few years after the album release, the material was used as the basis for a short-running Broadway musical titled Shinbone Alley, one of whose collaborators on the project was Mel Brooks (which explains some of the randomness for me). The musical was then adapted into an animated film in 1971.I remember at the time realizing there was more to this film than I could fully understand. The weight of the material was palpable for me but went over my head as a 10 year old. But one thing that was very clear to me was that this wasn't an animated feature aimed at children. Looking back, I appreciate what this film was attempting to do. I had never watched an animated film that was so serious in subject matter. It was a little shocking to me at the time but gave me a very early view of what animation could be. I recommend this film based mostly on its uniqueness. It is certainly a flawed film and somewhat odd but that seems to add to its quirky allure.

A story I heard, that filmmakers once considered doing an animated version of the musical Cats, has just reminded me of that disappointing 1971 cartoon of Shinbone Alley, based on the Joe Darion/George Kleinsinger stage musical. Eddie Bracken and Carol Channing recreate their roles from the still-earlier "concept album" archy and mehitabel. Where these two had been cute and intimate, and, above all, musical, cockroach and cat were now rasping, whining and screeching -- characteristics that could have worked fine for those particular actors, but in sufficiently small quantities.One of the most disappointing characters was Bill, the big blackhearted tomcat originally sung by Percival Dove (best known for the singing voice of Brock Peters as Crown in Porgy and Bess). The prospect of an apparently offensive ethnic stereotype inspired filmmakers, as far as I can observe, to eliminate black performers from the piece altogether -- the part is done by Alan Reed, aka Fred Flintstone!Yes I know: Carol is "black" now.Aside from singing cats, it parallelled the Lloyd-Webber musical Cats in the deployment of a flying manhole cover, during the song Flotsam and Jetsam: "Only Mehitabel could get that high on a 'lid'" is the tag (penned by Mel Brooks, incidentally).Compared to George Pal's classic 1946 treatment of an earlier Kleinsinger work, Tubby the Tuba, the limited animation here was flat and ugly. Adult content of story is not of interest to children I suppose (although probably not harmful either), so the problems of marketing this picture probably helped bury it. I'll say this though: it just may be better than Fritz the Cat!

As a child, I saw some TV filler on the making of this film and waited for it to come to town. Months later it surfaced at a local theater as a one weekend only kiddie feature. Naturally I went, and endured hours of blue & bleak imagery, a depressing story, and the voice of Carol Channing. I remember kids in the theater crying because it depressed them so. The whole experience was a childhood trauma I tried to forget. For god's sake, the cartoon opens with a guy's suicide!Years later I'd described this forgotten film to friends, but not even hardcore toon heads knew about it. However, I did learn that the songs came from an early 60's Broadway flop of the same name which featured Eartha Kitt in the Carol Channing role, and that was based on an earlier series of "humorous" stories from the 1930's.I managed to track down a copy of this film and give it another look from an adult's perspective. Man, no wonder we kids of the 70's are so messed up! This film really is possessed of a dark dreary depressing vision. I can't see how it resembles Yellow Submarine. Yes, it has a trippy pallet, but it's one bad trip. If anything, it's thick black lines and cross-hatched shading resemble TV's "School House Rock", and even more so those terrible "Time For Timer" bits that ABC subjected us to.I'll cut the film some slack, because I know it was not aimed at kids, and thus suffered the same fate that `Watership Down' and `Twice Upon A Time' would later know. Namely, that all feature animation gets marked as kiddie fare regardless of content. Not only do the creators suffer, but the kids suffer more. Speaking as a former kid, I must tell you to spare your kids and yourselves this animated curiosity.

I'd disagree that this was little more than some Heinz Adelmann rip-off. This film's got real class. It's a pity so few people saw it in its original run, and so few have seen it since. It's a true rarity in today's film culture. Our cartoons are still EXACTLY what the producers of this film wanted to break away from. The colours and imagery used in this film are often quite reminiscent of this "Yellow Submarine" feature you speak of. In fact, at one time there was a blue meany involved in the "Insects of the world unite" sequence. Of course it was removed. I think it was only a joke. But, this film is a great opportunity to learn about the cinema underdogs, the films geared towards a higher audience that seldom do well in theatre. I would add the Iron Giant to this category as well.