Review for Cool World

Director: Ralph Bakshi

Released: 1992

Genre: ???

Cool World is a 1992 film directed by Ralph Bakshi and starring Brad Pitt, Kim Basinger, and a man who eerily resembles Sean Penn but is actually named Gabriel Byrne. The movie portrays characters and worlds both animated and real, a format that requires immense technical skill (and, I would imagine, near infinite patience) to pull off convincingly. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, directed by Robert Zamekis and released four years prior to Cool World, was a seminal release in which such a presentation works; the result is an enjoyable film that is once funny and enthralling, appealing to people of all ages. Bakshi intended to direct a more risque and edgier response to Roger Rabbit, but instead of building on the successes of its predecessor, Cool World became a sort of anti-matter to it instead; where the former succeeds, the latter fails. Immensely. In fact, the word "immensely" itself does not convey the magnitude of Cool World's shortcomings. I don't think any word in the English language does.

I honestly don't know where to start... Cool World begins like it just might go somewhere; Pitt's character returns from his service in World War II to a then desolate Las Vegas, and takes his mother for a ride on an Indian motorcycle he supposedly bought in Italy. Predictably, they get in a horrible accident with a drunk driver by a small casino. The mother dies, Pitt has a flashback, and then an ambulance arrives. Pitt seems fine, but for reasons I still don't understand despite watching the film twice, he is suddenly sucked into a horribly animated world by a bald, lilliputian scientist in what may be one of the most abrupt scene transitions I've ever witnessed in a movie. From this point on, most of the story takes place in the "Cool World," a comically two dimensional realm that resembles the bowels of hell more than anything... cinematic hell, that is.

I'm not even sure if I should continue explaining the plot; I could spend hours trying my best to make sense of it, but I would wind up with a bad headache and an uninterested reader. I'll try to give as short of a summary as I can: after Pitt leaves the real world for "Cool World," we flash forward to Las Vegas in 1992, where we see a prison inmate, played by the Sean Penn lookalike, drawing Kim Basinger's character, "Holli Would." Yes, that's her name. As one of my friends put it, she looks like Tinkerbell's slutty cousin. As Penn draws her in his cell, she comes to life (in a horribly drawn, laughably bad cut-scene) and beckons her creator to follow her into "Cool World." An instant later, he falls into a bar with a bunch of identical, flatly drawn wolf characters dancing to club music. He looks up and sees Holli dancing grotesquely on the dance floor in front of him, flaunting her inked curves for all to see. It's terribly awkward to watch, and not sexy in the least. In fact, it's downright traumatizing. For the next half hour the scenes switch hurriedly back and forth between Pitt, Penn, Holli and a bunch of nameless and interchangeable animated characters. Eventually, Pitt, who is a "Cool World" detective, confronts Penn, the only other human in the land. The advice Pitt provides can be summed up in a single declaration, the most disturbing in the film: "Noids don't have sex with Doodles." It is explained that Noids are humans, whereas Doodles are cartoons. Eventually, Penn does have sex with a doodle- Kim Basinger's cartooned incarnation to be exact. This repulsive act of inter-dimensional lovemaking results in catastrophy, breaking down the barrier between the "Cool World" and the real world and threatening to turn the Earth into a badly drawn comic book. What ensues is absolute nonsense as Penn and Basinger, who are both real at this point, begin to wreak havoc on Las Vegas in search of the animated professor's doohickey, which for some reason will help separate the two universes and put an end to the debacle. In short, everything is a mess.

Any potential for this film to redeem itself is quashed by the massive technical faults throughout. The animation is choppy and out of perspective; when Pitt smokes one of Holly's animated cigarettes, it looks like he has Parkinson's Disease worse than Michael J. Fox. The sets in "Cool World" are not even hand drawn, but are instead consist of flat wood panels for furniture that look wholly unconvincing when the camera pans anywhere. They are so pervasive that, at the end of the film, Pitt is laying at the base of a set of stairs that are spray painted on a wooden board. You can even see his shadow on the panel he leans against. Of course, by the time that part came around I had stopped caring about Cool World, and just wanted something to eat.

In conclusion, the only reason I would ever recommend this film to anyone is if they are prepared to berate it with a group of friends for fun, as I did. Never have I seen a movie that was so difficult to follow yet so unrewarding as a whole. David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. may have been impossible to piece together, but at least I was infuriated with the lack of that "aha!" moment, because it meant I was invested in the plot and characters. Cool World, however, just left me listless and drained, as if I had been the victim of degrading emotional abuse. I challenge someone to compile a complete list of continuity errors and plot holes, because as far as movie disasters go, this one rivals Battlefield Earth!

0.25/4.00

Here's a short clip of Holli Would's uninspired appearance in Cool World, set to the soothing, classic tune, "Lollipop": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io4YtSAeGoE&feature=fvw