Cool and the Crazy
Cool and the Crazy
| 16 September 1994 (USA)
Cool and the Crazy Trailers

Unhappily married couple Roslyn and Michael lead separate affairs that lead to violent repercussions for all.

Reviews
Curapedi

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

... View More
WillSushyMedia

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

... View More
Hulkeasexo

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

... View More
Wyatt

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

... View More
gavin6942

Unhappily married couple Roslyn (Alicia Silverstone) and Michael (Jared Leto) lead separate affairs that lead to violent repercussions for all.This was one of the last films from American International Pictures, produced by Lou Arkoff and Debra Hill. The director was Ralph Bakshi, who had made his name with "Fritz the Cat" and "Heavy Traffic".Some credit should be given for the casting, as both leads have now gone on to bigger things and most likely few people have ever seen or even heard of this picture (hardly a gem).What is most strange is the morality of the narrative. Cheating is not so much a bad thing in itself (according to this film), but bad when things turn violent with the competition. So, I guess, if married women choose better men to have affairs with, the whole thing is no big deal...

... View More
D_Burke

"Cool and the Crazy" seems like a promising film. It has Alicia Silverstone and Jared Leto, who were better known as "the girl from the Aerosmith music videos" and "the guy from 'My So-Called Life" respectively, when this film first aired on Showtime in 1994. It is also directed by Ralph Bakshi, whose previous films, all of which were fully or mostly animated, included "Fritz The Cat" (1972), "Heavy Traffic" (1973), and the animated "Lord of the Rings" (1977). These films were not to everyone's taste. However, you couldn't deny the ambition that went into these films, nor could you not respect Bakshi's taste for the unorthodox and his steadfast refusal of the cinema status quo."Cool and the Crazy" is not animated, which will surprise many Bakshi fans. It is also poorly acted and written, and is by far the most half-baked film Bakshi ever put out. Given the bright futures of its two young stars and the good reputation of Bakshi, it comes as a huge disappointment.If you find "Cool and the Crazy" on DVD, you may not know how or why it was released. It originally aired part of Showtime's "Rebel Highway" series. It was one of ten low-budget made-for-TV movies created as a tribute to the 1950's exploitative B-movies "with a 90's edge". So in a way, this film is supposed to be campy. However, since fewer people had cable back then, let alone a subscription channel like Showtime, and not all of the films featured in "Rebel Highway" have received DVD releases yet, you wouldn't know that fact unless you did Internet research like I did. Regardless, being intentionally campy and low- budget is no excuse for an underdeveloped story.Silverstone and Leto play Roslyn and Michael, two '50's teenagers who get married right out of high school at the same time (in the same ceremony even) as Roslyn's best friend, Joannie (Jennifer Blanc). One year later, Roslyn and Michael have a baby, and Michael is struggling to make ends meet with his job. Roslyn, fed up with her humdrum lifestyle as a housewife, goes out on the town with Joannie every night. Both women cheat on their husbands more than once, and Michael gradually gets more suspicious of Joannie.There's a good setup here for a story. Unfortunately, both Silverstone and Leto are very unconvincing as teenagers in the '50's, and as a distraught married couple. Silverstone looks and acts more like a teen of the '90's, and even wears her hair like a '90's girl would. She also seems really jaded when her character should be agonizing over the monotony of her married life.Leto is not too bad in his role, but it's interesting how he suspects Joannie and doesn't really seem to know her that well. Did the two couples not get married together as the first scene shows? Plus, they live close to each other, so wouldn't they know each other pretty well?Such an unexplained plot point grows even bigger when Joannie's husband, Frankie (Bradford Tatum) discovers Joannie's infidelity. Leto acts like he doesn't even know him when he arrives at their apartment. To make the scene even more forced, Frankie, when trying to get through a crowd of neighbors who gather around to see what the noise is all about, parts the crowd by making an laughably-awkward scream. It sounds like a crow after being hit by a golf ball.Eventually, it turns out that one of the men Roslyn sleeps with, Joey (Mathew Flint) is psychotic. At first, Roslyn is turned on by Joey's bad boy image, but he gets too attached to her, not even leaving her alone when Roslyn calls the whole thing off.There is a chase where Michael goes after Joey directly following his kidnapping of Roslyn. There is also a enticing sex scene between Michael and his co-worker, Lorraine (the beautiful Christine Harnos from "Dazes and Confused" (1993)). With both scenes, you're supposed to root for Roslyn and Michael not to drift apart, I guess. However, they make such a miserable couple that I sort of wished Michael would have run off with Lorraine. Instead, the ending was a bit of a cop out, and was way too over the top. The resolution was even worse at the end.Seeing as how Bakshi made this film, I wondered if I would have been more interested in it if it were animated. Considering drawing a scene is much harder than pointing a camera at live humans, I'm guessing more thought would have been put into the story that way. Instead, we get characters that are so underdeveloped that we don't care about them, the acting is sub par, and in the end, you have a very forgettable film. It's good that Silverstone and Leto had better roles waiting for them in the next few years to come. In Silverstone's case, if you liked "Clueless", you should stay away from this film.

... View More
amovieaboutourlives

Totally mislead, very simple and uninteresting plot. Actually the person who directed and the person who produced this, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. The characters are not well developed and the performances are very poor, and I'm talking about all the actors here, including my beloved Jared Leto, whom I've seen doing a much better job in lots of other roles, even those he performed during the 90's, but I can forgive him for this one because I don't think that with this movie and with this lines he could have done better. Well, wasn't for him I wouldn't have been 90 minutes standing in front of the TV watching this piece of stinky you-know-what.

... View More
kathiekel

I really liked this movie. It is very hard to find since it is out of production. It is about Roslyn, played very well by Alicia Silverstone,who is a young newly-wed with marital problem. She goes out wtih her friend, played by Jennifer Blanc, to a dance and meets bad boy, Joey, played by Matthew Flint. Joey is no good, and is married himself, and this affair is hopeless from the beginning. What I like about this movie is that Alicia is EXTREMELY believeable when she is on the beach with Joey and she tells him to stop his advances, but she also wants him to continue. She whispers desperately, out a different era in American high school dating, for him to stop, "someone will see us", etc. The choice of soft backround music from the 50's really set the mood, also. Why this movie has had so little attention, and why your other writers do not seem to forcast the eventual greatness of Alicia Silverstone from this movie is beyond me. Of course, now the only edition of this movie is in PALS, in German.

... View More