same disc the soundtracks to both Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic. The film also featured songs by Sérgio Mendes and Brasil '66, The Isley Brothers, Dave Brubeck, and Chuck Berry. Reception Although Heavy Traffic received an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, more theaters were willing to screen adult-oriented animated features because of the success of Fritz the Cat, and thus Heavy Traffic was a box office success. Ralph Bakshi was the first person in the animation industry since Walt Disney to have two financially successful films back-to-back. The film was banned by the film censorship board in the Canadian province of Alberta when it was originally released. Heavy Traffic is considered to be Bakshi's biggest critical success. Newsweek wrote that the film contained 'black humor, powerful grotesquerie and peculiar raw beauty. Episodes of violence and sexuality are both explicit and parodies of flesh-and-blood porn ... a celebration of urban decay'. Roger Greenspun, of The New York Times, wrote in his 1973 review: 'People who felt that his earlier feature, Fritz the Cat, merely debased a cherished original, can now judge Bakshi's development of his own material. I think that development is as brilliant as anything in recent movies — as brilliant and, in its own improbable way, as lovely and as sad.' Charles Champlin wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the film was 'a further leaping step forward for American animation; at that, Heavy Traffic is, in its furious energy, uncomfortable to watch as often as it is hilarious'. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four, and wrote that 'by mixing live-action and animation, Bakshi generates a willingness in us to be moved in some 'aw, shucks' ways that are corny, but feel good'. The Hollywood Reporter called it "shocking, outrageous, offensive, sometimes incoherent, occasionally unintelligent; however, it is also an authentic work of movie art and Bakshi is certainly the most creative American animator since Disney". Vincent Canby ranked it among his "Ten Best Films of 1973". Gary Arnold, of The Washington Post, was negative, calling the film 'ostentatiously ugly' with 'nothing pleasurable or liberating in [Bakshi's] style of mockery'. The film holds a score of 89% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 18 reviews. Michael Barrier, an animation historian, described Heavy Traffic and Fritz the Cat as 'not merely provocative, but highly ambitious'.