At a time when a black and white animated movie about growing up as an aspiring punk in the shadow of the Iranian revolution can be nominated for an Academy Award, it might seem that animation has lost its identity as a disreputable, marginalized form, especially if it comes with subtitles. The Hungarian film The District!, which had a blip of a U.S. theatrical release a month ago and has just been released on DVD, serves as one hell of a corrective towards the trend in cartoon respectability. Set in a teeming Budapest neighborhood that's mythic in its grungy amorality — a newscaster in the film blithely describes it as a "hotbed or organized crime and the European porn industry" — it's a misanthropic vision out of Ralph Bakshi's seamiest nightmares. The movie traffics in ethnic stereotypes, some pretty standard (Jewish, Arab) and some more exotic — when's the last time you saw a movie that went out of its way to slander the Gypsy community?
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