American Pop is the product of a mature Bakshi. The anger, frustration, and intensity of Traffic and Coonskin are more controlled and focused. Bakshi's vision of America, while still ambivalent, reflects the changes that have occurred in both the filmmaker and his society in the last decade. Bakshi equates his personal and fantasy life with the recent American experience, synthesizing the two in this dramatic history of four generations of an immigrant family trying to make it in America. He understands both the creative and destructive power of the American Dream as only someone who has believed in it and has been disillusioned can. American Pop is in the tradition of The Great Gatsby: a brilliant indictment of the American Dream of Success.

American Pop follows a poor Jewish family from turn-of-the-century Russia, where a pogrom forces them to immigrate to America, to Los Angeles in the Eighties, where the great grandson descendant of this displaced Old World family realizes the American Dream by becoming a rock star. (pp. 18-19)

The theme of American Pop, the irony of the American Dream, and the broad sweep of its story, encompassing eighty years of the American experience, make it a modern American epic. This film is also a cinematic epic because of its synthesis of images and music, character and cultural milieu, story and mise en scène. American Pop is the first animated film ever to approach the potential of the medium….

Music is an integral part of American Pop because it plays such an important role in the lives of all four generations of the film's immigrant family. It is not only the vehicle for their quest for the American Dream, it also represents their inmost selves. Bakshi believes that "the values of a generation are reflected in its popular music. Music is part of our times. Popular songs remind you of different periods more effectively than anything else can. I've attempted to select songs for Pop that evoke a sense of time and place."

Music is not the only element Bakshi employs to evoke a "sense of time and place." The style and form of different scenes in American Pop reflect the time period, geographical location, emotional tone, and character of each scene's protagonists. Bakshi adapted the style of the artists he thought epitomized the art of each generation. (p. 19)

Few filmmakers ever tap the power of popular music to affect their audiences. Fewer still have fully exploited film's potential for manipulating the viewer's senses, utilizing symbols that have an impact on both the conscious and subliminal levels, or integrating story, character, imagery, sound, and symbolism in a way that affects both the intellectual and visceral response the viewer has to a movie. How many times have you left a theater having experienced film in a new way—knowing more about yourself and your society? American Pop provides such an experience….

The irony of American Pop is the irony of the American Dream. Bakshi is trying to tell us we spend all our lives chasing a sham and in the process lose our real opportunities for happy and meaningful lives. By extension, America is losing its opportunity to fulfill its promise—to make the American Dream a reality instead of a religion based on avarice and lust for fame.

The family member who finally wins fame and fortune, Pete, knows nothing about his family or their traditions. He is a bastard without friends, family, or a sense of belonging to a community….

What had they gained, after eighty years, this immigrant family questing after the American Dream? They won a platinum LP and lost their souls. It's no wonder that Bakshi is controversial. He is holding up a mirror we don't want to look in. (p. 20)