Heavy Metal Review

Heavy Metal is what you get when you base a film off of ideas about collections of art, images, and music. There is no central theme to the film that is meaningful or at all important so far as plot or story. Heavy Metal is an amalgamation of different kinds of art and genres and that is where it offers worth as a film. However, it is also what stops it short from becoming a good film.
The same ideas that give Heavy Metal it's strength are the ones that causes all the weaknesses. Instead of doing a collection of completely separate stories, Heavy Metal tries to loosely connect them with an outer story of some green ball of evil that is just showing her all this stuff. The problem is, not all the stories are about evil. One story is about some aliens who pick up a secretary and then a robot sleeps with her. Then the robot makes masturbation and Jewish jokes and that is just about the entire film. Sure, the aliens do cocaine and go on a drug trip and see the Star Trek Enterprise but that isn't necessarily evil. And if it is, it isn't even the main part of the story. Other stories are more about good triumphing over evil than they are about the pure evil this green ball is talking about. Also, as the ball is telling the last story, in the story a woman defeats the ball. While the ball is telling this story, he blows up. It could be argued that the point was this new girl was the new guardian and she defeated the evil, but she just ran out of the house. How could the ball tell the story of him getting defeated if he had been defeated and how could him telling the story defeat him. There is really no excuse for this. My theory is, whenever someone wanted to put something into the film that they thought would be a cool idea they had to tie it to the green ball.
The only discussions for this film in the planning stages probably all began with, "wouldn't it be cool if..." That explains why a roto-scoped convertible with a guy in a space suit brings that ball of death home to his daughter. "Wouldn't it be cool if we had some guy in a space suit driving a convertible in space?" "Sure, but how do we tie it in?" "Ummm, the green ball. He is bringing the green ball home to his daughter." These "wouldn't it be cool if" ideas ruin any chance the film had for a plot or any cohesive moments. Even the music doesn't match. The music is a wide arrangement of "metal bands" and even classical music and less heavy metal bands. Even thought the film is entitled Heavy Metal, heavy metal is played just as often as non-heavy metal bands and music. They didn't get a Heavy Metal artist to do the music in the film, they got Elmer Bernstein. The music plays over talking, or begins in odd places or ends in equally odd places. Even though Bersteins music plays throughout the film, it is interrupted with metal songs and no theme or cohesiveness can be achieved. The music does not emphasize the mood or develop the theme. They are simply songs to listen to while you watch the images.
All of these things that make a bad film also make the film interesting. The "wouldn't it be cool if" mentality brings some visually interesting things to the screen. For instance, "wouldn't it be cool if we filmed a naked woman and then drew over the film?" From that we saw extensive artistic roto-scoping and technology advancements. Of course, this is again countered by choppy, child-like animation from non-rotoscoped animations. Again the lack of cohesiveness is evident even in the animation, some shots and segments are extremely artistic and intriguing while others are bland and more like a He-Man cartoon.
In the end, the film is a success for what it seemed to set out to do. It was a film to showcase art and story ideas from and for a specific demographic. It was a film that provided the question to a handful of people. "wouldn't it be cool if," and that handful of people who they were asking responded with "yes." The film wasn't a huge success, and isn't necessarily referred to as a legendary classic, but a notable one at least in the terms of animation. Though this film has no cohesiveness whatsoever and fails to maintain any theme or direction, it is a successful orgy of science fiction, heavy music, naked women, fantasy beliefs, and sometimes imaginative art.