Cool World (1992) Paramount/Comedy-Fantasy RT: 101 minutes Rated PG-13 (language, sexual content, suggestive dialogue) Director: Ralph Bakshi Screenplay: Michael Grais and Mark Victor Music: Mark Isham Cinematography: John A. Alonzo Release date: July 10, 1992 (US) Cast: Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne, Brad Pitt, Michele Abrams, Deirdre O’Connell, Janni Brenn-Lowen, Carrie Hamilton, Frank Sinatra Jr. Box Office: $14.1M (US)
Rating: ***
Think of Cool World as Roger Rabbit on acid. It’s quite a unique experience. It was one of the movies that I was most looking forward to in the summer of ’92, I couldn’t wait to get a look at animator Ralph Bakshi’s first film in nine years (after 1983’s Fire and Ice). Perhaps he’s best known as the man who gave us the 1972 cult favorite Fritz the Cat based on Robert Crumb’s comic strip and the first animated film to receive an X rating. Bakshi also directed Heavy Traffic, Wizards, The Lord of the Rings and American Pop. He’s got quite a resume.
Bakshi hasn’t made a movie since Cool World which I think got a bum rap by critics and audiences alike. It’s not the light summer comedy-fantasy that everybody expected. It’s really more for the adults, but you wouldn’t know it since Paramount insisted on a PG-13 movie which meant that the racy material had to be toned down considerably. That’s too bad; so many missed opportunities. However, what’s left is still a pretty cool movie. It tends to be pretty surreal at times and that’s a definite bonus! Cool World has a great premise. It starts out strong, but loses momentum about midway through and never quite regains its footing. It may be flawed, but it’s fun in a demented sort of way.
The action begins in 1945 when returning soldier Frank Harris (Pitt, Interview with the Vampire) and his mother get into a motorcycle accident. She dies and he’s transported to the “Cool World”, a surreal animated universe where he learns that he was brought there by a “spike” invented by Doc Whiskers. It was supposed to take the doctor to the real world, but it brought Frank to Cool World instead. He ends up leaving Frank in charge when he successfully transports himself to the real world.
Cut to present day where we meet Jack Deebs (Byrne, The Usual Suspects), a cartoonist who’s just about to be released from prison after serving time for murdering a man he found in bed with his wife. During his incarceration, he created the highly-acclaimed Cool World comic book series or so he thinks. The reality is that Cool World has always been there; Jack just based his drawings on what he thought were dreams. He’s brought there on several occasions by Holly Would (Basinger, L.A. Confidential), a femme fatale/nymphomaniac who longs to cross over into the real world.
Frank is now a cop in CW, a hard-boiled type right out of 40s detective fiction. His job is to uphold the most important law in Cool World, “noids” (humans from the real world) are forbidden to have sex with “doodles” (the cartoon inhabitants of CW) for reasons that will become clear in a moment. He confronts Jack at a nightclub and tells him he shouldn’t get involved with Holly. She’s bad news and only wants one thing. Jack nevertheless sleeps with Holly and that’s when we learn the reason for the “no sex with doodles” law. It turns doodles into noids! Shortly afterwards, Holly and Jack cross over into the real world. That’s where the real trouble begins.
I like the trippy visuals in Cool World a lot. They’re like something out of a drug-induced hallucination starring public domain animated characters. With its surreal landscapes and incidents of random violence, it’s like a place one might visit in a nightmare. As for the assorted animated characters, think of a Tex Avery cartoon for adults. The combination of live action and animation is neither as convincing nor as seamless as Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), but it works precisely because it looks so bizarre.
It’s a pretty wild movie and I give Bakshi a lot of credit for attempting to do something different than the average summer movie. He succeeds to a point. Cool World starts off strong but falls apart by the end. I don’t mind that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I like weird movies and this one definitely qualifies. I just wish it had been stronger in the storytelling department.
Basinger makes an excellent Holly Would….. in animated form. She’s like a mix of Jessica Rabbit and Marilyn Monroe. In one scene, she sings a duet of “Let’s Make Love” with Frank Sinatra Jr. at a Las Vegas nightclub. Once she becomes real, it’s almost as if she’s reprising her role from My Stepmother Is an Alien. Byrne is okay as the cartoonist who gets a real wake-up call concerning the nature of reality. Pitt shows great promise in one of his early roles. BTW, that’s Carrie Hamilton (Carol Burnett’s late daughter) as the comic book store cashier.
Cool World is at its best when it stays in the CW. It loses a little something when it returns to the real world. Perhaps Bakshi should have spent more time in Cool World and less in the real world, then maybe we’d be talking about something major. As it stands, it’s an interesting movie with great visuals and a weak screenplay. It’s worth checking out, but it should have been much better than it is. Apparently, Bakshi originally intended to make a completely different kind of movie. It was supposed to be more of a horror movie. I’d like to see that version someday.
