A mixed bag, to be sure, but not (at least in my opinion) the disaster that's widely believed to be. The story may be weak and the technology sometimes flawed, but there is one thing you can't accuse Ralph Bakshi of, and that is a shortage of imagination and creativity. The screen is filled with mostly enjoyable throwaway characters and gags, and even though the film keeps changing tones rapidly (from "slapsticky" to erotic to sad), it doesn't lose your attention. Neither does Kim Basinger, at her most gorgeous here. (**1/2)
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gridoon4 April 2001
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Pannozzi12 May 2005Here's my review of Ralph Bakshi's 1992 Paramount Picture "Cool World", starring Brad Pitt, Gabriel Byrne, & Kim Basinger.
I won't give a plot synthesis, as that would spoil the fun. Instead, I'll cut straight to the chase and give you my brutally honest opinion on this film. I'll start with my view on the widely-held opinion that "Cool World" is a rip-off of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Even though "Cool World" is undeniably Roger Rabbit-esquire, and Brad Pitt said in an interview that "'Cool World' is like 'Roger Rabbit' on acid", sexy cartoon women and combining live-action and animation have been staples of Bakshi's films before Gary K. Wolf even created Roger Rabbit. "Cool World" reminds me more of "Gremlins 2: The New Batch", because A: The rule that noids (humans) and doodles (cartoon characters) can not have sex with each other is similar to the 3 rules for owning a Mogwai because they are ancient sacred rules that must not be broken, lest cartoon-type chaos wreck havoc, & B: Holli's goons (Slash, Bash, Mash and Bob) reminded me of Gizmo's 2nd batch of offspring (Mohawk, Daffy, George and Lenny).
Anyway, there are a lot of things wrong with this movie. First of all, there are lots of plot holes and plot points that are never fully explained. This might be fun for those with imagination, but most would find it lazy and rushed. Kim Basinger is a pretty lousy actress in this movie. True, her character Holli Would was meant to be hated, but the doodle and noid versions of Holli look and behave so differently it's almost hard to believe that they're the same character. Gabriel Byrne plays a pretty dull character in this film, and only part I was interested in Jack was when he became a super-powered doodle, and that wasn't even Gabe voicing Super Jack, it was Maurice LaMarche (who is based known as the voice of Brain from 'Pinky and the Brain'). Also, the combination of live-action and animation is not nearly as smooth (in both the way the cartoons are placed onto the live-action and in the live-action actors' interactions and responses to the cartoon characters that are added later) as it was in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and similar films like "Space Jam" and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" and "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle". To top it all off, the whole film just feels dated, even for 1992, I guess partly due to it using ink-and-paint-on-cells instead of digital ink-and-paint, which even Bakshi's protégés at the Ren and Stimpy show were able to afford on an animated TV series budget and use in several episodes of its 2nd season, which premiered only a few months after "Cool World"'s release.
But the disaster this film ended up being is actually not entirely Ralph Bakshi's fault. Ralph's original script for this had Holli (originally called Debbie Dallas) and Jack having a son who was a strange combination of live-action and animated body parts and who hated himself for what he was & what he wasn't and attempted to murder his father. But producer Frank Mancuso Junior (whose father, Frank Mancuso Senior, was then the head of Paramount Pictures) had the script completely rewritten which heavily muted the film's messages of the importance of fatherhood and the dangers of casual sex, and hired Kim Basinger (who was a pain in the butt during shooting and ruined the movie even more) and Gabriel Byrne (whom Bakshi felt was too much a foreigner to play an American underground cartoonist) when Bakshi wanted Drew Barrymore and Brad Pitt to play the leads.
But even with Mancuso's bastardizing Bakshi's original vision for the film, there are still some things in "Cool World" to enjoy. For one, the animation is mostly quite good and reminded me at times of Tiny Toons and Ren & Stimpy. Also, Brad Pitt does a rather decent job acting in this picture (despite his interactions with cartoon characters leaving a good amount to be desired, as he's no Bob Hoskins) as his character Frank Harris is rather likable. Also, Harris's arachnid doodle partner Nails is a delightful nutty character voiced by Charlie Adler, my personal favorite voice-over actor who has done many of my most favorite cartoon characters like Buster Bunny, Cow and Chicken, Ickis, Ed and Bev Bighead and many more. The secondary and minor doodles like Lonette (whom I consider a much more desirable woman than Holli due to her being a brunette and having a caring personality), the aforementioned Goons, Sparks and Doc Whiskers are all interesting (plus they're voiced by greats like Candi Milo and the aforementioned Maurice LaMarche), as are the noids Jennifer and Isabelle Malley. Too bad they're kind of stuck in the background. And there are quite a few memorable laugh-out moments that make this film worth seeing at least once IMHO.
So in the end, although this film would be perfect for Mystery Science Theater 3000, I still find "Cool World" interesting and enjoyable. It's certainly not as great as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", I'm not quite sure if I find it better than "Space Jam" and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" and I definitely find it better than the well-intended but ultimately lame "Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" movie (despite AoR&B having better production values than CW). All in all, "Cool World"'s not a very good, but it is very interesting and I recommend that everyone should watch it at least once (but it's not for the immature and/or overly sensitive).
Look out for: Future Ren & Stimpy producer Steve Worth in a cameo as a comic book store patron (he's the fat guy), and also for Maggie "Maude Flanders" Roswell. -
"History is written by winners, baby. So let's make a little of our own tonight. If you're thinkin' my idea of fun is a drag, then you've never been to paradise. Do my kisses burn? Do they take your breath? You've got a lesson to learn, now. I'm the kiss of death."
There was a time in the mid-90's when My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult was showing up in movies all over the place. Hey look - that's them playing "After the Flesh" in The Crow! Oh wow, they're on the soundtrack of Showgirls! That's "Hit & Run Holiday" in The Flintstones! Heck, they're even on the soundtrack of BASEketball! And they're all over Cool World, too.
Between "The Devil Does Drugs", "Holli's Groove", "Sex on Wheelz", "Her Sassy Kiss" and "Sedusa," TKK makes up a good chunk of this film, which is kinda like the band we're talking about - a mix of the past, the imagined future, sex, violence, drugs and danger.
Cool World is the first movie Ralph Bakshi made after Fire and Ice. He'd been developing plenty of films, including an adaption of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer and an animal version of Sherlock Holmes. He also turned down directing Something Wicked This Way Comes and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which he passed on to Ridley Scott who turned it into Blade Runner. After an attempt to film J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, he actually got the opportunity to speak to the mysterious author, who told him that the novel was unfilmable. This led to Bakshi's brief retirement (he still ended up working with Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi on the Rolling Stone's "Harlem Shuffle" video and TV's Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures) before getting excited about Cool World.
In its original pitch, a cartoon and human give birth to a hybrid child who visits the real world to find and kill the father who abandoned him. Bakshi had longed to create a film that looked like a living, breathing painting that people could physically walk through. Designer Barry Jackson helped bring these worlds to life, which were created as gigantic paintings and the animation was to look like a mix of Fleischer Studios and Terrytoons.
Yet even as the expensive sets were being built, Paramount producer Frank Mancuso Jr. secretly had a new screenplay written and demanded that Bakshi direct the film, under threat of lawsuit (Bakshi punching him in the face may have had something to do with that). Even casting was changed, with Holli Would's role switching from Drew Barrymore to Kim Basinger.
It got to the point that even Basinger was rewriting the script, because she wanted to show it to sick kids in hospitals. As for Bakshi, he just told his animators to do whatever they thought was funny.
So what ended up on screen?
Las Vegas, 1945. World War II vet Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) takes his mother on a motorcycle ride that ends in tragedy when a drunk driver hits them. He retreats to an animated alternate dimension called "Cool World" to deal with the loss.
Cut to 1992. Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) might have killed his wife after catching her in bed with her lover, but he's also created a comic book called Cool World. In truth, he's really just tapping into the other world. And inside that world, Holli Would (Kim Basinger) has kept trying to visit the real world but is continually denied by Frank, who is now a detective that keeps people from crossing over between dimensions.
Once he gets out of jail, Jack finds his way back to Cool World and meets up with Holli and Frank. Frank warns him that this world has existed way before he was even alive and that for years, noids from the human world have tried to have sex with doodles, or Cool World inhabitants. It's never really stated, but something horrible will happen if this occurs.
Holli, of course, seduces Jack and becomes a human. This is in direct contrast to Frank, who has a rough relationship with a doodle named Lonette. His partner, Nails, doesn't tell him about Holli's crime so that Frank can try and patch up his latest fight with his girl. Unfortunately, Holli murders him and crosses over to our world.
Holli goes wild in the real world, performing onstage with Frank Sinatra Jr. and consuming every vice she can get her hands on. Yet she and Jack are now stuck between worlds unless they find the Spike of Power, a magic object that a doodle in the real world has left behind. She unleashes Cool World on our world, but Jack succeeds in stopping her. Holli kills Frank, but because she was a doodle in our world - who decides on these laws? - he can now be reborn as a doodle in Cool World, to the delight of his girlfriend. Plus, Holli and Jack end up as a toon couple.
Cool World feels like it wants to be an adult Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which was how it was sold. They don't explain much, but I feel like Cool World is where the imagination of our world ends up living (as symbolized by the sketches that show up out of nowhere). It feels like there is plenty of potential, but knowing what we know today, studio interference took the heart and soul out of the film.
Interestingly, Paramount Pictures created a publicity uproar by placing a huge cut-out of Holli Would on the D of the Hollywood sign. All they had to do was make a donation of $27,000 to the sign's maintenance fund, another $27,000 to the Rebuild L.A. fund and the salary for two park rangers to guard the sign. Local residents were enraged, however, and demanded that the ad be taken down.
Back to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. Even if you don't enjoy the film, you'll probably love the soundtrack. It also boasts songs by David Bowie, Thompson Twins, Electronic, The Future Sound of London, Ministry, The Cult, Moby, Brian Eno and others. It's totally a time capsule of 1992 and worth listening to. -
Blueghost4 April 2004"Cool World" is one of those films that feels unfinished, and comes across as a well done test-market film, but not one that's ready for theatrical release. The actors seem to have a hold on their characters, but lack some direction.
The animation is good, though the mixture of genres'll probably throw some people. The story's incomplete, the characters are never entirely explored, and the mechanics of the fictional worlds aren't fully explained. The result is a film that's a bit of a mess, but still holds some interest for its unique take on an old animation genre.
Ultimately it's a film that should've been more than what it ultimately became. It's not a film for kids, watch only if you're into animation. -
alexconsalvos26 April 2012This is my review of director Ralph Bakshi's 1992 live action/animated film, "Cool World." In contrast to everyone else's opinions about this movie, I have to say that to me,"Cool World" is a half-good, half-bad film. There are elements in it that truly do rock, but there are other elements to it that truly do suck. One part about it that's awesome is the animation; sure it doesn't look 100% convincing combined with the live actors, sure there are WAY TOO MANY DOODLES that do absolutely NOTHING for the progression of the poorly-laid out plot, but I do think that all of the animated characters were drawn and colored really well, and the way they were animated is one of the good things other people DO praise this movie for because the hand-drawn visuals really do look great.
About Kim Basinger's performance as Holli Would; she did a pretty good job voicing her, I have to say that I was (and still am) impressed with how good Kim's voice-acting was. Yet, when she played the noid Holli,Kim really lagged. I think she was trying to portray how an animated character that's become flesh-and-blood behaves in trying to adjust to life in the real world, but when I watched the movie, the real-Holli performance out of Kim was not convincing at all. Gabriel Byrne's character of Jack Deebs was supposed to be THE main protagonist in the movie, but he was the least developed main character in the history of main characters in film. Brad Pitt (as Frank Harris) was the only actor out of the whole cast who truly DID act. He actually did a pretty good job at portraying this man whose life turned tragic (you'll have to see the beginning of the movie to know what I mean) and how the real world didn't feel real to him anymore, but Cool World did.
"Cool World" has so many great storytelling/plot elements to it that are either hardly ever explained in the film or just not explained at all. One of these full-of-holes plot elements that isn't explained in full are the mechanics as to how sex between a noid and a doodle ruptures the inter-dimensional fabric between Cool World and the real world (and how noids can spontaneously turn into doodles when both worlds collide). Another one is how the "Spike of Power" artifact really works as far as opening up a portal between both worlds and how it gives noids and doodles the ability to teleport back and forth between them. One more missing plot element: Jack Deebs's whole story. We know that he's been sent to prison for a crime of passion (again, see the movie to find out what I'm talking about), but that part right there could have been elaborated on more. And how exactly DID he get visions of Cool World in order to create a comic book series about it? How exactly was Holli repeatedly bringing Jack there and misleading him to thinking that he's getting visions/dreaming about Cool World? These things really need(ed) to be explained in full, NOT in pieces.
All in all, I don't think "Cool World" is a terrible movie at all. It is a good, entertaining movie, but one that's full of holes and only partially complete. Since I see things in this film that need to come out more as far as plot and character development. I seriously hope that there will be a remake of this film sometime in the (hopefully) not to distant future. A remake of a "bad" movie like "Cool World" (doesn't matter when exactly) can actually "save" the film so to speak by making the plot and characters of the original much, much better. For example, the 1986 fantasy film "Troll," directed by John Carl Buechler, opened to mostly negative critical response when it first came out, yet, Mr. Buechler IS remaking it for a theatrical release later in 2012. Another example is the 2003 live action "The Cat in the Hat," which got enormous negative response when it premiered. Now, the studio that made "The Lorax" is planning on doing a CGI remake of "The Cat in the Hat." And often, a remake of a "bad" movie fares a lot better (financially and critically) than the original. That is why "Cool World" is an excellent candidate for a remake because there are a lot of missing pieces to it that can be filled in, can be explained, the characters can still be developed in full, and that will make sense out of the story. -
bregund18 February 2005When I saw this movie in a theater years ago, people threw things at the screen: popcorn, soda, candy boxes. One man threw his shoes. Seldom have I seen a film so universally hated as Cool World. The movie looks like it was patched together with scotch tape. Did the animators even know what a storyboard is? As delightfully integrated as the live-action/animation is in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cool World is exactly the opposite: the live-action actors look like they are talking to the coat racks they were talking to before the animation was added. The division between live-action and animation is crystal clear.
Brad Pitt's incomparable acting skills are not enough to allow a willing suspension of disbelief that he is actually immersed in the animated world. BTW, never again will I watch Brad Pitt in anything without hearing his 1930s cartoon voice "What's in the boooooooooox? What's in the booooooooox?" from Se7en.
The long, awkward pauses that pepper this movie from start to finish guarantee that you can keep it running AND get a snack from the fridge without missing a beat, provided of course that you don't lose interest twenty minutes into the thing and perhaps throw a shoe at the t.v. If you get to the end, you experience the enviable pleasure of Kim Basinger being turned back into a cartoon again, as though her live-action performance isn't already cartoonish. And you get to see super-long cartoon arms that save the day for everyone.
Sigh. It's as bad as Monkey Bone, Pluto Nash, and Deuce Bigalow put together. I wonder if I can get a government grant to track down all copies of Cool World and destroy them. -
I had heard that this film was messy and awful and everything, but as I am a huge animation fan I was thinking maybe I should give it a chance, maybe it wouldn't be that bad. Cool World wasn't absolutely awful, it had its saving graces, but there is a lot wrong as well that makes it a major disappointment. This has been compared to other live-action films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, I'll keep the comparison brief; Cool World isn't as fun, innovative or as original as WFRR, and I will admit I wasn't expecting it to be.
PROS: The animation is not bad at all. The backgrounds look like paintings, the characters are drawn reasonably well and the colours are beautiful. The soundtrack is pretty good too, the score is wonderful and the songs are fun and suitably upbeat. I like the character of Holli Would, she is sensual and sexy, yet she is very selfish and cruel, that makes her intriguing. Personally I thought Kim Bassinger did a decent job playing her. Plus the live action sequences were well shot.
CONS: Whereas the animation sequences and the live action sequences are fine individually, merged together they don't quite gel, in fact they are quite jarring-the live action considerably duller than the animation and the human characters are incredibly stiff. While I was fine with Kim Bassinger, the other acting is not great at all I feel. Gabriel Byrne is given little to do and struggles, while Brad Pitt(who has actually given some good performances in some good films, ie. Se7en) speaks in a constant monotonic drawl to the point he's boring. The script is very unfocused, derivative and confused, and the story is incomplete and meanders all over the place. Complete with very pedestrian pacing, badly underdeveloped characters and a WTF? ending, and you have a pretty disappointing film overall.
All in all, has its moments, but out of the Ralph Bakshi films I've seen, this is my least favourite, a film that had promise but failed to deliver. 4/10 Bethany Cox -
Cool World: Directed by Ralph Bakshi and written by Michael Grais and Mark Victor
We continue with our single digit Tomatometer rating series. This time we have Cool World made in 1992 in the shadow of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and its rating is 4%. Wow that's not good. That's downright awful. What would make me want to continue down this path of painful, agony cinema? This is a strange movie. I know, I understand that I'm being a bit generous with that description. This transcends strange into bizarro world.
The first thing to remember about this movie is the plot is simple and utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of what this movie represents. It is all about building this world. It doesn't tell you specifically why some things are done the way they are until later on but it does tell you if you're paying attention. This is difficult to do because the entire time you're saying to yourself what is going on here?
The attention to detail for the backgrounds and the characters you see and meet is intricate and never less than fascinating. It is wacky cartoons all over the place. The humans are just whatever for the most part. From what I read about this movie was originally meant which was a hard R live action/animation horror movie, the remnants of that is located in a lot of the DNA of this movie. The situations are designed to be crazy and a bit horrifying while maintaining their cartoon logic.
I also did not realize how sexual this movie is as well. This is rated PG-13 but it is skirting the very far edges of that rating. The entire plot hinges on a doodle as they are called making it with a noid( which is what they call real people). I did love how when the noids interacted with the environment, it shows it as cardboard or 2 D. This attention to detail was the best part of this strange movie.
I can not officially recommend this movie to anyone but I am glad they made it. I found it incredibly fascinating. I give this movie a B. -
Mister-68 May 2000Ralph Bakshi. The very name conjures up such successes and ground-breaking movies as "Fritz the Cat", "Heavy Traffic", the taboo-shattering "Coonskin" and even later triumphs as "American Pop". He even made good in re-animating cartoon versions of "Spider-Man" and "Mighty Mouse". I even remember the funny characters he created for that video for The Rolling Stones' "Harlem Shuffle".
So... why did his usual command of the medium slide down so much in quality with "Cool World"?
We all know what Bakshi is capable of. That he allowed something so slip-shod to be released without any re-tooling is shameful. With a surer touch and better script, this could have been a latter-day success story for him.
Instead, Bakshi shows as much uncertainty in his live-action direction as he does his animation here: none of the characters have much charisma, personality or reason to be given screen time.
Rather than that, what you have is a sad, cynical exercise to cash-in on the animation craze that was rightfully set off with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" in 1990. Yes, cash-in; you heard me. Something so slapped-together and ungainly as to have cartoon characters simply run across the screen without announcement just to keep the audience off-guard is saying something, and it's not something nice.
What actors like Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt are doing in this is anyone's guess, unless Bakshi is just a master pitch-man. But even their scenes, animated or not, add next to nothing. And that's sad seeing, under certain circumstances, they have all done great things before and since - though, admittedly, it's hard to imagine Kim as an Oscar-winner after watching her gallivant around in a school-girl skirt and a Barbie-voice.
SO many scenes are either too short or go on and on and on without a sign of actually being about anything (like the night club scene - Frank Sinatra Jr??!). Someone must have REALLY wanted to rush this film through badly, allowing a product so obviously unfinished as this to be unleashed on the unsuspecting movie-going public at large. It's typical of Hollywood, but nothing that should be allowed for anyone the likes of Bakshi and company (SHOULD BE, that is).
Someday, maybe Bakshi will take this film, redo it and re-release it with the bad and unfinished scenes either removed, repaired or made more coherent, and he'll have his renaissance yet. But so far, this "Cool World" is set on quick thaw.
One star, some of the animation is indeed well-done and the vast cityscape of the "Cool World" is fascinating. If only something else as interesting had happened around it. -
NateWatchesCoolMovies12 May 2016Cool World is known, by those few who may be aware of its existence, as the 'other' film in which live action characters inhabit the same realm as cartoons. The more famous one of course is Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a glorious gem of a film that gets the acclaim, notoriety and long lasting attention, as it well should. (We won't speak of a third one involving a certain moose and squirrel that really does earn it's bad rap). Cool World is somewhat maligned as the black sheep of the two, and in some people's eyes (Ebert laid a stern smackdown on it) downright hated on. It's no doubt very different from Roger Rabbit, which is admittedly the better film and the easier one to like and relate to. But this one is brilliant in its own right, at least for me. I love the way it uses a sombre tone with its human creations to throw a unique light on them as soon as the Toons show up. It's quaint and wonderfully inaccessible, with some scenes existing purely of a need to showcase a stream of consciousness type style that doesn't so much halt the proceedings, as give them their own surreal flavor. Brad Pitt is Frank Harris, victim of a jarring post war tragedy and thrown headlong into the cartoon world, eventually finding himself a Detective in their realm. Outside in our world, lonely cartoonist Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne is a sly choice for the role) falls in love with one of his creations, a blonde bombshell named Holli Would (voiced and later played in the flesh by Kim Basinger). Holli is as devious as she is gorgeous, and works to use Jack's attraction to her as a conduit to escape into our world. Pretty soon a deafening cacophany of cartoon creatures in all shapes, sizes and colours floods out of their dimension and into ours, creating quite the cosmic mess for Pitt to clean up. It's fun without being too zany, the overblown fuss of the Toons contrasted by a glum human world, reeling from the war and unexpecting of such an event to unfold. Granted, the meshing of the two dimensions isn't given the precise, big budget fanfare and cutting edge methods of Roger Rabbit, but the world building and special effects here are still pure enchantment and offer a dazzling level of entertainment. Pitt is stoic with flinty sparks of boyish charm, Byrne hilariously plays it dead straight, and Basinger is dead friggin sexy. She steals the show especially as Holli in human form, having a ball with the bubbly bimbo trying to keep a straight face in the real world. The Toons in general really are a diverse bunch, ranging from animals to inanimate objects to tiny little formless cutesy blobs and everything in between, filling their frames with a chaotic, detailed miasma worthy of Studio Ghibli. Lot of hate floating around for this one. You won't find any from me, I love the film, and accept it for the adult friendly, experimental oddity it is. Great stuff.
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La Gremlin14 April 2001This movie was, as promised by my friends who watched it before I did (and managed to live), so freakin' insane and bizarre that it fails me to write a normal review about it. Instead, I have here a short list of what I learned from this movie. Read it and you need never satisfy your curiosity about it. Bear in mind that I'm not making any of these plot points up.
* Some Wartime flashbacks can send you to cartoon lands.
* If it has a copyright date, it's real.
* Bunnies shouldn't shoot craps with demon babies.
* Spiders are allergic to clouds.
* Cartoon characters spend a lot of their free time chasing each other around with big axes.
* You'll make an unforgettable first impression with people if you giggle uncontrollably while falling all over your man like a slut. You should also shout "I'm REAL!" periodically.
* "You can't go around smelling people!" - direct quote from the Gabriel Byrne character.
* There are exactly 80,000,000 ways to die. Frank counted.
* Illustrators' homes tend to be wellsprings of strange psychic phenomina.
* If you are in Las Vegas and people up and start changing into strange random creatures, you should probably think about going home.
Well, I hope that answers any questions you've all had about "Cool World". You may all go about your business. I wish I could. -
AmandaMichelleTenney28 September 2019I love this movie. It's so incredibly creative and interesting, and I love how fearless it is. Sure, it could be better, but I'm not going to complain because I know it already took so much thought and creativity as it is to get to where it got. Not surprising that most people didn't like it, it takes a very mature mind to be able to see what's actually really cool, interesting, and fun about it. No wonder it's a cult classic.
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aliciamcmurren8 June 2020Where Cool World exists is not the concept the file features Holly who is toon not kid friendly movie adult themed so don't be fooled. Quips and dark humor is all throughout and lusty sciences. Enjoy. See it for yourself.
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Spleen16 August 1999There are people who fantasise about having sex with Disney heroines and/or Wonder Woman; from the evidence presented here, I would say that Ralph Bakshi is among them. Note that I said, "from the evidence presented here". I'll be the first to admit it's not very good evidence. "Cool World" is badly organised, devoid of passion, and just plain dull. It certainly doesn't FEEL like any kind of window into Bakshi's soul, or anyone else's.
Here's the scenario. There are two worlds: cool world, which is animated, and our own world, which isn't. They exist in some kind of unstable equilibrium which can be disrupted with disastrous, but unspecified, consequences, if - get this for a lark - a person from one world has sex with a person from the other. (Is this like "Species", or what?) The central cartoonist character thus spends most of the time on the verge of having sex with the animated Holli Wood. That's the scenario. (No, it really is.) The PLOT, on the other hand, is anyone's guess.
Many of the sets consist of cardboard cut-outs filmed precisely head on, so as to look like cartoon backgrounds but allow actors to walk through them. A great visual idea, huh? Well, it seems that Bakshi didn't think any further than that; for, as if there weren't enough problems already, you can tell that the actors are walking around very gingerly indeed, obviously aware that their slightest movement might case bits of furniture to wobble or fall over. As for Holli herself - she just doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid. Her Saturday-morning temptress look has straight-jacketed her animators, and she's so sexy-by-the-numbers that she isn't sexy at all. The rest of the film is painfully clumsy and dull and she could easily have been the best thing in it. She isn't. -
daisyhinojosa2311 November 2011As an animator, I have a thing for movies where real people and cartoons collide, so I decided to watch this film and after wards I thought it was a really good movie. First off, the animation is great. The characters are likable and fun to see on screen, and the whole idea of the movie is interesting. Though some of the acting is bad, and the plot isn't fully explained, and the ending is a little anti-climactic, the rest of the film makes up for it. I also enjoyed the sub-plot of the film, and Holli Would's dancing (thought it was obviously rotoscoped). But overall I really do believe this is an underrated film, because it contains the sexiest cartoon ever made: Holli Would. I'd recommend this film to a friend, and watch it the second time. It really is a film you'd remembered.
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jrdepriest10 November 2006I've heard this movie called "Roger Rabbit on Acid." This movie has about as much in common with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/) as "Natural Born Killers" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110632/).
Where WFRR took great strides to make sure that the flesh and animated actors interacted convincingly (even having the flesh actors take mime training to learn how to simulate weight and substance when nothing is there), CW just sort of throws the stuff up there and hopes it looks nice.
Unless you want to masturbate to a sexy cartoon women pole dancing around (Holli Would looks much better in ink than she did in person, anyway), go watch something else.
It's like they didn't even really try... -
catalystpaperbag25 May 2000Watching this movie numerous times through the years does bring to notice a lot of the flaws that should have been seen during post production, or more helpful, the actual production process of this film. To name a few: animation for background characters stop and disappear at the mid point of the screen, some characters are only sketched in (although I'm sure this was made to look deliberate, though most likely was not).. in some of the human interactions with the animated characters, like the scene where Harris visits Holli's house at a beginning point in the film (after he gets his foot stuck in the cardboard door upon entrance- a scene which was never edited, cut or reshot) you can see HE stays still a certain point in the room, the camera pans back, while her cell walks away only a foot or two, and is suddenly across the room...the proportions are all wrong...or the scene where Jack is touching Holli's face saying "I drew you, I made you...maybe I can erase you", you can tell he was directed as *you are touching her face with your hand* even though, she moves away while his hand stays in place... There were also many things cut, plot and character details that could have made this film more (if even possible) personally redeeming. Why not concentrate on a beginning scene with Jack finding his wife in bed with another man, giving example to the extremes of his distemperment and rage to SHOW how he got to prison...Or how when he is in prison, sketching, how he just sort of says a line like "without you I'd never have made it"...why not show the true co dependance he has with his own creations...or to explain the time cycle repetion attempt at a twist thing with greater care or density? It was imbalanced, very dissapointing...but for what its worth, has accumulated a great deal of cult success, although many people may want to forget about what a bomb this film was, need to think about what they were TRYING to accomplish here... there are unforgivable flaws...but get really loaded and you've got yourself an evening, right...
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I've always been a fan of real people being on camera with cartoon characters. Either living in the same or different universes, the concept is fun to think and imagine about. But of course, there has to be professional work involved. And the problem with Cool World is that much of it looks unpolished. There are other examples before and after this that show animation can look really slick. The best role model would be Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), then comes others like Space Jam (1996) and Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003). There's no dimension between what's real and cartoons; everything is 2D.
Even more surprising is how uninteresting the cartoon characters look. The only two characters that make themselves the attention grabbers are the curvaceous Holli Would played by Kim Basinger, and Lonette voiced by Candi Milo. The rest of the characters are eye soars. It's weird too because Holli Would and Lonette are the only too human-like characters that are in the universe of Cool World. Every thing else are animal-like creatures that have perverted minds. Plus that doesn't make them very funny.
The main plot is the creator of Cool World, Jack Deebs, acted by Gabriel Byrne, is dragged into the universe he created. The reason for being pulled into Cool World is that his favorite creation, Holli Would, wants to become human. But the only way she can become human is by having sex with another human,...or as they call it in Cool World, a "Noid". And the person who polices this crime is Detective Frank Harris, played by Brad Pitt. All these actors do their jobs but nothing is done to make them stand out from other movies.
There were a couple things I did like but I didn't get enough of. I enjoyed the musical score produced Mark Isham. Much of it is jazzy with the saxophone always resounding in the background. I also felt more of an attraction to the personal connection between Harris and Lonette. Whenever they were on screen together, I wanted to see more between them than just arguments about how Harris being careless at his job. These two characters had potential and director Ralph Bakshi had minimal work done for them. Very disappointing.
Lastly, it's very difficult to figure out who's the protagonist and antagonist in this story. At first, it feels like Holli Would is the innocent one and Harris is holding her back. And then the end of the film switches the roles. And it's also mentioned at the end of the film that Harris is the hero yet Byrne's character was the hero and was never thanked. For writers Michael Grais and Mark Victor, I don't understand how any of this made sense. I was hoping to get a different experience but all I got was unpleasantness.
The characterizations are confusing and the animation is sloppy. The only parts that stand out are Isham's music and the relationship between Harris and Lonette. -
swatter18 September 2019I finally got around to seeing this film. I went in with low expecations. On the surface it's got terrible acting (which I think is deliberate--more below) and looks like a lower budget version of WKRR. To my surprise I was seeing psychotic imagery: cityscapes with faces buried in the twisting architecture and hypersexual sadistic toons frantically jumping across the screen almost nonstop, manifesting the main character's (the male cartoonist's) fantasies. Example: there's a scene where a toon character gets sucked into a pen by a toon woman as a kind of "toon murder". After she leaves the screen, it fills up with death-like toon charaters, and a single disembodied voice continually shouts "Oh, that's gotta hurt. Pen me too! Hurt me! Hurt me!" Contrasting this, Brad Pitt is the film's cock block--an older character in a position of authority. At this point it was obvious: This isn't WKRR. it's a Freudian surrealist horror comedy. I looked it up after viewing and sure enough, a screenwriter (Larry Gross, who worked on the film without credit) interviewed in the LA Times called it "an elaborate Freudian castration-anxiety dream." The movie made a lot more sense to me once this clicked. Because it's trying to fit in some difficult themes in jarring ways, I don't really know how to rate this one, so I'm giving it a slight above average score for the attempt. For those of you who worry about how women are presented, you might feel disturbed by the fantasy imagery at points, though to note, the fatale character does disrupt some of those tropes (without going into spoilers). If you keep that in mind, you might figure out whether or not this is a film you want to watch.
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jeremiah-3916 March 2006When I saw this movie in the theater in 1992, about 3/4 of the way through the movie I left the movie theater in disgust of the utter awfulness and almost total lack of any entertainment value of this movie...
...I think that is the only time that I have ever left a movie early (i.e. I *don't* do that...except for Cool World).
This movie was painful to watch. It became the benchmark of badness (not bad good, bad bad), against which I evaluated all other bad movies that I have seen over the years. For several years after seeing the movie, when something sick and wrong came up in conversation, I often thought of Cool World.
Do yourself a favor, and do NOT see this movie. -
If you "get" Bakshi, then this is pretty good. If you whine and complain about his "cheap" rotoscoping in his past films, then you sure don't "get" Bakshi.
That said, this film is chock full of celebs; and considering when this came out, it's no wonder people can't help but think of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Meaning, if that's all you see here (a WFRR knock-off) then you probably never quite understood what Bakshi does.
This isn't his best, but it's definitely good fun and wild as heck. If you like weird and arty films and are willing to actually think about what you're watching, this is for you. -
mrsatan21 January 1999This movie is bad. Real bad. And not bad in a good way. It is just a bad rip-off of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", with none of that movie's charm. Ralph Bakshi has made a career out of making cartoon characters do "naughty" things. Stuff that cartoon characters aren't supposed to do! Too bad nobody cares anymore. Far more daring (and interesting!) stuff is coming out of Japan these days. Please, do not waste your time or money with this movie; rent "Roger Rabbit" instead, or one of Toshio Maeda's movies.
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kingcasey_iii19 October 2020A classic twisted 90's style cartoon about a cartoonist who has the ability to enter the world of his creation a mad abstract demented world where a ruthless cartoon will do anything it takes to become real.
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RaymanHortse9 February 2021Roger Rabbit created the bomb of mixing animation and live action, then many projects came wanting to replicate its success
In 1992 this film came and presented a bizarre version of this peculiar mix with a more adult air than in Roger Rabbit and it is thanked. The character designs look aesthetically unique, each with the idea of provoking a different reaction in the viewer with very good results. The sets also gain a lot, most of them being very faithfull representations of backgrounds drawn in wax as it used to be done in those times. The voice acting and the actors must be emphasized, iwich is quite superb and they interact very well with each other. Regardless, the story is sustained in most cases and we are presented with how this world works superficially.
The problem that i see in the film is the rhythm, sometimes it wants to go fas and other times very slowly, breaking the immersion in the story. In addition there are also too many awkward moments with very unnecesary camera close-ups, they caused me several deviations of my face from the screen.
It's definitely not for kids, adults can have a good time and teens can have a fun and uncomfortable time. -
MissSimonetta6 August 2014It disheartens me when I meet someone whose only exposure to Ralph Bakshi is his 1992 misfire, Cool World. Maimed by executive meddling, this is one of the few movies that I regret watching. Yes, it is so bad that it made me keenly aware that I had wasted a small portion of my life for nothing.
The plot does not exist. The "plot" is more like an outline of unfinished concepts and themes which lead nowhere. The "rules" of Cool World make no sense. Why does a doodle (animated character) having sex with a noid (live action character) lead to the doodle becoming real? Why does a noid getting killed by a doodle turn the noid into a doodle? Why did we introduce the plot MacGuffin during the final third of the movie?
The characters are about as defined as stick figures. Holly, the villain of the piece, has vague motivations which constantly shift over the course of the film. That Kim Basinger's performance consists of nothing but blank stares and cheap eroticism does not help any. Gabriel Byrne sleepwalks through his role as the ex-convict artist Holly seduces. The less said about Brad Pitt's goofy 1940s gumshoe, the better.
The integration of animation and live action is terrible. The animated characters look flat and never seem to share the same plane as their live action co-stars, and it's especially obvious in scenes where the noids and doodles touch.
The only good thing about Cool World is the background art in the cartoon world, which can only be described as surreal urban decay. They're wonderful to look at; more than can be said for the characters that populate them.
Do not watch this at all. If you're curious, then watch some clips and read the synopsis online. This is NOT worth a second of your time.