YMMV / Coonskin

• Animation Age Ghetto: It's telling that the film was released a year after Blazing Saddles, a live-action comedy that, while not without its own critics, also featured similarly overused racist language to depict racism as horrible and is considered a masterpiece, while this movie, being an animated crime-drama, is relegated to the "exploitation" category.
• Angst? What Angst?: Marigold didn't seem particularly fazed when her dad, the sheriff, gets stabbed and presumably killed by the brothers.
• Awesome Music: The film's theme song, "Coonskin No More" by Scatman Crothers. "Walk on, niggas, walk on!"
  • The slow waltz music that plays during the mafia dance.
• Designated Hero: Despite being the protagonist, Brother Rabbit has no qualms about killing at the drop of a hat. In addition, his plan to "help" the black neighborhood is to do exactly what the Mafia was doing, except he and the black gangster keep all the money. As such from the perspective of the people in the neighborhood, nothing changed. Yet, the story portrays this as a positive change for some reason.
• Don't Shoot the Message: The film's use of blackface stereotypes and racist dialogue are very clearly part of the satire on racism it's going for. Plus, not only did Bakshi really do his homework on the subject matter (pulling from both his own experiences with black peers and doing extensive interviews with pedestrians about being black in post-Civil Rights America circa 1975) to ensure that the satire would be accurate, but he also had a mostly-black staff animating the film. Nevertheless, most audiences simply can't look past the racist imagery and the fact that it's a blaxploitation film made by a white filmmaker to see anything of value in it.
• Magnificent Bastard: Brother Rabbit starts out as a simple rabbit who travels to Harlem with his friends Brother Bear and Preacher Fox. Upon tricking con artist Simple Savior into letting him go and killing him after exposing his revolution as a scam and stealing his money, Rabbit finds that he has the chance to take over all of Harlem's crime rackets. Seeking this position by taking out all potential obstacles, Rabbit starts with the racist, homophobic cop Madigan, having him drugged, put in blackface and a dress to break his sanity, and then killed by police during a rampage. With the Godfather and his sons up next, Rabbit works with Fox to trick Bear into becoming the mob's boxer and promises to show up to a match, only to entangle the family in a tar baby trap and blow them all up. Rabbit ends the story the king of Harlem's underworld, proving to be as smart and mean as can be.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: The film was widely popular with African-American audiences, to the point where many couldn't believe that Bakshi was white.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Thanks to Al Sharpton, who famously denounced the movie while refusing to actually see it and lobbied to have it pulled from theaters. It apparently got so bad that one theater showing the film was smoke bombed by protestors.
• Special Effects Failure: Probably the intention, but the animated characters don't really blend in well with the live-action backgrounds (most of which are very dimly lit, by the way).
• Vindicated by History: The film initially received mixed reviews upon its release (the above mentioned controversy most certainly didn't help). Nowadays, it's much more positively received and the satire is still pretty relevant.

---