Fire and Ice Reviews

Frank Frazetta was a great fantasy illustrator. Probably the best in the business by sheer virtue of his influence which trickeld down into Saturday morning cartoons (Masters of the Universe), video games (The Legend of Zelda franchise), superhero comics (Marc Silvestri is an admitted fan and disciple). So it would seem a prime case that his artwork and influence would lead to an animated fantasy film that would stand tall in the genre and be a measuring stick for the rest of it, in terms of looks alone. Sadly, Fire and Ice is only halfway there in every sense of the phrase.

It seems odd that Ralph Bakshi would want to create a sword and sorcery story when so much of his work resides in the spaces in-between the towering skyscrapers and amongst the urbanite malaise. Truth be told, the same problems with the animation in those films carries over into this one. Backgrounds are beautifully painted but static, characters never actually interact with them in any meaningful way leaving behind the impression that they’re floating on top of the environments and actions. There’s a nice visual landscape going on, and it’s peopled with a few original and interesting character designs, but the monosyllabic heroes are ripped straight from Conan the Barbarian, perhaps blunted of their more dangerous edges. There still remains a problem of overly sexualized male-fantasy females who wear outfits that make pasties and a g-string look like a nun’s robes. If they were actually self-empowered and not damsels-in-distress so much of the time the skimpy outfits wouldn’t bother me as much, but the main character feels like wish-fulfillment masturbatory fantasy for a thirteen year old.

The story had been done a million times before this and it offers up nothing new, which is a shame given the immense creative talents going on behind the scenes. Having said that, it’s entertaining enough and moves with a nice quick pace. Occasionally stumbling across an arresting scene or moment by happy accident, and the rotoscoping here doesn’t announce itself so jarringly as it did in his version of Lord of the Rings. I know I haven’t exactly been kind of Bakshi or his work, so why do I keep watching his films? Well, I want to like and respect him as an artist since he has taken animation into an area that is outside of the easily-digestible Disney happy-place. While I may find his work sometimes vulgar or ugly, often times both, I want to believe that there’s at least something of major value that he made. I’m still looking.