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Author Tom Wolfe called him "the Salvador Dali of the custom car movement." His name was Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, a self-described "motorhead" who flunked everything but art class and auto shop at Bell High School in the late-'40s Los Angeles suburbs, then evolved from a hot-rodding bum to a recognized genius of the automobile as art form.

Director Ron Mann ("Comic Book Confidential," "Grass") tells Roth's story in "Tales of the Rat Fink," a wild ride through the history of Southern California post-war car culture and the life of the man who shifted it into high gear with his radical custom-car creations, his monster-hot rod T-shirt line and his trademark anti-Mickey Mouse, "Rat Fink," which symbolized the man's deeply rebellious, fun-loving soul.

Alienated adolescents of the '60s loved him, and through animation, vintage film and a veritable pageant of automotive beauties lovingly photographed in living "Kandy" color, Mann shows why Roth deserved the adoration. He also enlists the voice talent of John Goodman, as the late Roth, supplying the hilarious narration, plus Ann-Margret, Jay Leno, the Smothers Brothers and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons as the voices of various cars. Modern-rockers the Sadies provide the authentically retro-sounding surf-music soundtrack.

— Gene Triplett