Product Description

Meet the coolest Cats in the criminal underworld in this edgy and funny satire on modern life. Times are tough for the mice living in Cat City. But they have a plan: a scientist has created a powerful weapon to shrink cats down to mice-sized. If the plan works, Cat City will become Mouseville.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #173441 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-07-06
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Animated, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Amazon.com
Cat City is an outdated James Bond spoof supposedly involving cats and mice, but the characters are just humans with animal heads and tails. Although the animation is a bit more polished, this 95-minute feature recalls the worst kidvid shows of the '70s and '80s. One pointless scene follows another as the characters natter in amateurish voices, mistimed gags fall flat, and the inane plot involving plans for the ultimate anticat weapon stumbles to its conclusion. Hispanic viewers will understandably take offense at the stereotypical depiction of the Mexican vampire bats. The jacket calls Cat City the "animated sensation that rocked critics and censors around the world." But except for a few brief shots of a rat in pasties and a G-string, and the possible double-entendre of the inept musical number "Pussy Talk," sung by a cat in baby-doll pajamas, the film would have a hard time qualifying for a PG rating. If Cat City were genuinely shocking, it'd be more fun. The film was made by the talented artists at the Pannonia Studio in Budapest in 1987. It's regrettable that this drivel is appearing on video instead of their brilliant, challenging features, The White Mare's Son and Heroic Times. --Charles Solomon

Customer Reviews

Lots of fun
I saw the original version in Hungarian when I was a teenager and loved the movie very much. THe review above says it's a bad james bond movie from the 70's and 80's. Well, don't forget that the cartoon was made in the 80's. If all the fun is lost in the English version, maybe the English script writers should be blamed. I am looking forward to seeing it again.

Brilliant Cartoon From Hungary
Cat City is the greatest achievement of Hungarian animators. It has an action-packed storyline with plenty of humour. This cartoon, Cat City is now a cult classic and an often quoted one. That's not without a reason. The dialogues are brilliantly written and are hilarious, and the characters are likeable.

The original title (Macskafogo) means literally Cat-catcher. According to the story, the cats are planning the extermination of all mice from the planet. However, the mice have a superhero to turn to, a James Bond-like mouse with great physical strength, teeth hard like diamonds, a god sense of humor, and the cleverness of an Einstein.
He is sent to a Japanese-seeming city called Pokio, to get the plans of a new weapon from a mouse scientist. While he is working undercover the mice need another person to draw attention away from him, and this other mouse is also sent to Japan. He is a bit over-weight, but he is a very warm-hearted mouse, who devotes all his time to playing his trumpet. (Unfortunately, though, after a planecrash, he finds himself in the jungle, where he is kidnapped by vampire bats, who also turn out to be music lovers.)
In the meantime, a group of assassin rats are hired to find the mouse agent and kill him.

The cartoon makes use of many clichés of Hollywood movies, making the reader laugh again and again.

The editorial
review reminds me of a headline from The Onion: 79 Percent Of Americans Missing The Point Entirely. Unless the translation is really bad, it is one of the best cartoons ever made. At least as funny as Shrek.