Thanks for the memories!

Overrated and overhyped

One of my all time favorites.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

If you don't know anything about this, Ralph Bakshi wrote a script that was supposed to be a hard-R rated horror film that mixed animation and live action about a half-toon/half-human monstrosity that goes on a murderous rampage. However, when he came to the set first day of filming, he found that producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. had the script secretly rewritten behind his back to become some "fish out of water" crap that was watered down to PG-13 and forced him to use this script. The script has nothing that connects, nothing is motivated. Things just happen randomly. Often we'll suddenly follow unfamiliar cartoon characters we haven't seen before or since while they do any random thing Bakshi could think of that the producer would let him do. The world building makes no sense. Brad Pitt, playing a WW2 veteran, accidentally kills his mother in a motorcycle accident, and is suddenly brought into the cartoon world for almost no reason. Then, we meet the main character in prison 50 years later drawing that world. But how could the world exist if he hasn't created it yet? Not only that, at one point, they mention the main character killed someone, and no one ever mentions it again. At the end, he suddenly turns into a cartoon superhero out of nowhere. Pitt dies, but that suddenly means that he turns into a cartoon as well. Not even the animation's good. Most of the cartoons lack shading, so they never blend in, and they don't match any of the live action materials or lighting. Often, crappy animation will suddenly play out in the middle of a scene in an attempt to make drawn out scenes feel like something's happening. Needless to say, Bakshi proceeded to punch Frank Mancuso, Jr. in the face. Honestly, the fact that he didn't kill him for using a script like this is charity. It didn't make things any better when Kim Basinger decided that she wanted this to be the kind of movie she could show children she visited in hospitals, and forced them to tone down things even more. Bare in mind, this is a movie where she grinds her ass right against Frank Sinatra, Jr's genitals and becomes human after having sex with Gabriel Byrne. Bakshi's never directed any theatrical film since, and has only done a couple of animated shorts and a live-action Jared Leto-led TV movie. I don't blame him. Apparently he's trying to get another project done, even though as of writing he's 79. Good for him. Meanwhile, Mancuso later produced "I Know Who Killed Me" and won a Razzie for worst picture. Currently he's set to produce Bill and Ted 3. God help us.

From "Fritz the Cat" (1972) to "Cool World" Ralph Bakshi's Commercial Successes were Few but the Workhorse kept Working and Delivering one Bent "Paint and Brush" Work after another.His "Toons" were Grotesque, Scary, and Not Family Friendly. They were Horrific, mostly and Cut the Cutting Edge Frequently. The Man has Talent and His Vision is Unique, it just Never Found a Place at the Multiplexes or in the Hearts of Mainstream America.His Films are all Worth a Watch. Especially for those that Search for the Unusual.This one is All Over the Map and is more Troubling than most of the Director/Artist Output. It was a Troubled Production from the Beginning. Starting as a Hard "R" it Morphed into a PG-13 Mess about the Time Kim Basinger came On Board.The Producers also Intruded with a Heavy Hand. It's Reported that Bakshi Punched one Square on the Nose when Informed of the Wholesale Changes.Overall, it's Best to Pay Little Attention to the Storyline or Any Kind of Logic, be it Toon or Noid. Just Enjoy the Craziness of the Template and the Imagination of the Images. The Soundtrack is Pretty Cool too.Brad Pitt, Basinger, and Gabriel Byrne go through the Motions, but it is the Maniacal Motion of the Toon Characterizations and the Psychedelic Backgrounds that Highlight. In the End Everything Else is Inconsequential by Default.

It 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.