It's times like this I wish I smoked pot: "Heavy Metal"

This sure ain't no Looney Tunes, but it should be required viewing for every 15-year-old boy. I may have been a little older when I first saw "Heavy Metal," but I no doubt was entranced by the combination of animation, sci-fi, fantasy and bare cartoon breasts. Eat your heart out, Jessica Rabbit. You're such a tease.

Now a quarter-century old, "Heavy Metal" was one of those rare animated movies for adults, even if the plots and characters in this anthology were incredibly juvenile. What we have here is a collection of shorts over the span of 90 minutes, all of them related to a mysterious glowing green orb and most of them involving curvy cartoon women who can't help but be naked a good deal of the time. And here I was dreaming about a Blondie and Cookie Bumstead sandwich.

If it sounds kind of silly, it is. Maybe that's because it's based on a comic book before comic books became "graphic novels." In any case, I can totally see how adolescent males -- in mind or body -- eat this up, especially if under the influence of a little herb. I mean, come on ... you've got cartoons with a rock n' roll soundtrack, man!

As for the actual stories, "Heavy Metal" starts off strong, with the amusing tale of a cabbie in futuristic New York, "Harry Canyon," followed by a classic teenage boy fantasy, "Den." The latter features the voice of John Candy, who delivers one of the movie's better lines: "There was no way I was gonna walk around this place with my dork hanging out!"

Things drop off a bit after that but aren't totally boring, and it's fun enough to watch a couple of stoner aliens and a horny robot kidnap a Pentagon secretary. The warrior woman who carries the final segment isn't hard to look at, either, although by that time you're stunned if any women in this movie are wearing clothes. Like I said, it's an adolescent male fantasy.

Sadly, as I grow older the appeal of "Heavy Metal" diminishes. Now it's more fun to pick out voices, such as John "Dean Wormer" Vernon as an alien trial prosecutor and Eugene "Jim's Dad" Levy and Harold "Stripes" Ramis as the stoner aliens. But hey, any movie that incorporates a Blue Oyster Cult song into the proceedings is OK by me. More cowbell!