The quality of the animation is cornflake packet standard, the script -- one or two minor moments excepted -- a disaster.
– ,
Time Out,
9 Feb 2006
fresh:
Bakshi manages to offend nearly everyone from transvestites to mafiosi; but the comic distancing achieved by his army of animators manages to bring off a most difficult kind of humor: the humor of pain and despair.
– Don Druker,
Chicago Reader,
1 Jan 2000
fresh:
A cruel, funny, heartbreaking love note to a city kept alive by its freaks, and always, always dying.
– Roger Greenspun,
New York Times,
21 May 2003
rotten:
There's something to offend everyone in this melange of crudely conceived, amateurishly animated stuff.
– Variety Staff,
Variety,
3 Sep 2008
fresh:
Heavy Traffic not only has an authentic tenement toughness but the rough feeling of unassimilated autobiography, of experiences and fantasies still keenly felt.