Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Disappointment for a huge fan!

Better Late Then Never

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Cool World: Directed by Ralph Bakshi and written by Michael Grais and Mark VictorWe 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.

In 1945 Las Vegas, Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) returns from fighting in Italy. He rides his motorcycle won in a poker game with his mother. They get into an accident and his mother is killed. Frank gets pulled into the animated "Cool World" by Dr. Vincent Whiskers who's trying to escape into the real world using his spike. It's 1992. Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) is in prison for killing his wife's lover. He's a cartoonist who created "Cool World". His creation Holli Would (Kim Basinger) pulls him into the animated world before he returns back to his cell.This is a really outlandish "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" world. Director Ralph Bakshi is more concerned with creating a crazy world than a compelling story or interesting performances. Pitt is stiff not reacting to the cartoon craziness. Byrne seems lost trying to act opposite cartoon characters. Holli is whiny. It's the kind of flashy chaos that distracts from the story or the characters. It's like watching a movie with a light shining into your eyes. This really wants to be cool but it's too crazy for its own good.

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.

I love animation. I also love the interaction of animation with live action. And I have often felt that it would be interesting to see animation for adults rather than kids.Enter Cool World.And exit again, rather rapidly. If you didn't see it when it came out, the odds are you probably haven't seen it despite the fact that it stars Kim Basinger (then near the top of her arc of success), Gabriel Byrne, and Brad Pitt (both in the early stages of their careers).The reason why it disappeared, why it practically never shows up on TV, is because it's a mess. A good idea, yes. Eye catching, yes. Decently animated - for the most part, yes. But overall, it is an incoherent shambles, and what you are left with is fragments of memory of what it looked like and a couple of major plot points (Basinger plays a cartoon character invented by Byrne who wants to have sex with him, and, er...). Everything else disappears into a miasma of confusion.It is worth seeking out the background story on what happened.A valiant effort and, perhaps, worth catching just for what it looks like, but a misfire.