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Cool WorldRating:
Release Date: 11 November, 2003 Retail Price: $14.99 OUR Price: $13.49 You SAVE: $1.50! Cast: Complete Cast (9 total) |
Cool World Reviews
Tough Times in Toon Town
"Cool World" is Ralph Bakshi's bizarre live-action/animation combination that followed by four years the ground breaking (and far more entertaining) "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" But its weirdness is wholly on the surface, weirdness for weirdness' sake, and that's exhausting. The film only runs 94 minutes, but it could have been told in six.
The story is very simple: in 1945, Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) is pulled into the Cool World after he's injured in a motorcycle accident; 50 years later, ex-con Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne), who made a name for himself in prison by drawing (unwittingly) Cool World-inspired comic books, is lured there by one of its denizens, Holly Would (Kim Basinger, although only her voice was used over another woman's rotoscoped body for animation). Holly -- who will remind men of every beautiful, psychotic girlfriend they couldn't resist -- wants to enter the Real World. Apparently, the only way to do that is by having sex with a `Noid ("humanoid" to us). As a Cool World police detective, Harris knows that lead to the destruction of both worlds, although how is never explained. Even "Ghostbusters" had a better explanation for why they shouldn't cross the streams of unlicensed nuclear accelerators: "It would be bad."
Most of the weirdness in "Cool World" comes from the background characters -- all of them inexplicably ugly, except for Holly and Harris' girlfriend, Lonette -- and its urban setting, a trashed city of twisted towers inhabited by ugly, angry toons (called Doodles) engaged in an endless cycle of assaulting each other. Imagine a story with scenes Hieronymous Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" playing in the background, only making even less sense, and you'll get an idea of the bizarre, incoherent visuals.
The story is a mess, full of plot holes, non-existent foreshadowing and, at the end, a deux ex machina to give it a happy ending. "Cool World" runs only 94 minutes, but tons of extraneous material was thrown in for padding; a sequence in which a Thumper-like rabbit is shooting craps has absolutely nothing to do with the story. The live-action camera work is clumsily handled, and the actors at times recite their lines as if they have no earthly idea what for. There's a joke about comedy that goes like this:
"Ask me what's the most important skill in comedy?"
"All right. What's--"
"Timing!"
In "Cool World," the actors aren't in on the joke. They slur their lines, drag them through time as if they're paid by the second. They're confused, and they know it. One scene with Pitt is priceless; after delivering some Bogart-like lines to a toon, he swivels his head with an expression that seems to ask, "Did I really say what I thought I said?"
The intermingling of reality and fantasy worlds is becoming a movie genre, with "Roger Rabbit," "Cool World," "MonkeyBone," "Space Jam" and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" each taking a swing at it. Of them, only "Roger Rabbit" has delivered a satisfying, coherent story. The rest need to have a cartoon anvil dropped on them, if only to teach a lesson about how to animate comedy.
Holli Would if she could -- but should you?
(...)
To watch or not to watch?
That is the question.
The back of my brain suffered the slings and arrows of a thousand bad reviews for Cool World, animator/director Ralph Bakshi's last Hollywood movie, which is also considered to be his worst.
I decided to watch it anyway, because, even Bakshi's worst is a lot better than the typical Hollywood films made today.
And the cast certainly looks impressive: Gabriel Bryne, Kim Basinger ... hey, Brad Pitt in one of his earliest major film roles.
Maybe this isn't so bad.
Or is it?
PLOT SUMMARY:
Cool World starts off in Las Vegas, 1944.
Frank Harris is a soldier returning from World War II.
After getting into a motorcycle accident, he is thrown into the Cool World, a world of cartoons.
This is the result of experimenting by a scientist who is attempting to put himself in the real world.
Flash-forward to 1992.
Jack Deebs is a cartoonist who has just returned from prison after serving time for killing his wife after she slept with another man.
Deebs is the creator of "Cool World," an interpretation of his visions of the Cool World.
He doesn't know that the Cool World is real until he is thrown smack dab in the middle of it.
Upon arriving in Cool World, he meets Holli Would, who is trying to become a real person by having sex with a human.
But the law in Cool World is that doodles (cartoons) can't have sex with 'noids (humans), because this could destroy both worlds.
THE GOOD:
The animation is quite impressive, even though it looks nothing like the animation in Ralph Bakshi's earlier films.
The acting is very good, and the direction is excellent.
The shots of the city of Las Vegas are great.
THE BAD:
Though entertaining for what it is, Cool World is missing the Bakshi touch.
It's a PG-13 film, which means that there is no nudity and barely any sex (and what little sex that IS in the film is "politically correct" and very 90s, very PG-13), an uncomfortable change from Bakshi's early, X-rated cartoon films like Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic.
Bakshi's trademark of heavy amounts of dialogue is missing here.
Most of the dialogue of "Cool World" is connected towards the plot, and what doesn't have anything to do with the plot is flat and poorly written -- another huge departure from Bakshi's earlier films.
Fritz the Cat, for instance had a bar scene featuring discussions on the race issue between multiple sets of crows.
It's original, it's unique, and it's very funny.
No dialogue of its kind is to be found in Cool World.
THE UGLY:
Many critics complained that Bakshi was just trying to cash in on Roger Rabbit's fame with this one, which is incorrect.
What Robert Zmeckis did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was nothing special.
A live action film with animated characters? Been there, done that.
MGM used this gimmick with Anchors Aweigh, in a scene in which Gene Kelly danced with Jerry the mouse (of "Tom & Jerry" fame).
Disney did it with Song of the South, Mary Poppins, and other films.
Even Bakshi did it way before Zmeckis -- in 1975's Coonskin.
So, how did Bakshi try to cash in on Roger Rabbit's fame with Cool World again?
The film looks VERY 90'S, which is not a good look for a Ralph Bakshi film.
Even Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had shadings and colors to make it look like a 1940s murder mystery.
Reportably, Bakshi wrote the original screenplay to Cool World, which, in his version, was about a man who has sex with a cartoon and they have a half-human/half-cartoon child who tries to kill him.
This story sounds much more entertaining than what producer Frrank Mancuso, Jr., and screenwriters Michael Grais and Mark Victor turned Cool World into.
The result was poorly conceived and executed.
This film is worth taking a look at, though, because the animation is good, Bakshi's direction is good, and the acting is good, even if the script isn't.
As for the combination of live-action and animation, Ralph Bakshi used this technique years earlier, and much more successfully in 1975's Coonskin (which was re-released on VHS under the title "Streetfight," with a caption above the new title that advertised the film as being "From the director of Cool World!"), an R-rated spoof of the the "blaxploitation" genre delivered in the format of Song of the South, and in the 1985 Rolling Stones music video The Harlem Shuffle.
Bakshi had planned to begin work on a sequel to his 1977 fantasy Wizards after Cool World wrapped, but 20th Century Fox backed out of the deal after Cool World flopped at the box office, which is a shame, though.
A sequel to Wizards would have been cool.
DVD DETAILS:
Region 1
Keep Case
Anamorphic Widescreen
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
Dolby Surround - English
Dolby Surround - French
Interactive Features:
Scene Access
Interactive Features
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