Cool World (1992)

In 1988, we were given the live action/animated feature, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That film had memorable characters, great special effects, the humor is funny, and it's a great mix of murder mysteries, conspiracies, and Hollywood satire. Plus, we also have Disney and Warner Bros animated characters in the same movie, which is sadly the only movie to have this achievement. Studios wanted to cash in with the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and in 1992, we have Cool World, directed by Ralph Bakshi, who was known for adult animated films back in the 1970s.

Cool World was doomed from the start. Bakshi wrote a screenplay about about a woman named Debbie Dallas who was half human, half cartoon, who gets revenge on her human father for the way she is. That was a script that could have been a potential horror film and Drew Barrymore could have played Debbie Dallas, who would later be renamed Holli Would. But producer Frank Mancuso Jr. was tired of making horror movies as he had done some of the Friday the 13th movies, so he hired Michael Grais and Mark Victor to rewrite the script against Bakshi's wishes. When Bakshi found out that his script was changed, he reportedly got into a brawl with Mancuso and Paramount threatened to sue him if he didn't finish the movie. Kim Basinger, who replaced Drew Barrymore, told Paramount to tone the film down so she could show the movie to sick children, and the animators were never given a script, so they had to draw whatever they want. What's the end result after a messy production? Let's find out!

The movie starts in 1945 when WWII veteran Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) comes home to Las Vegas and rides his new motorcycle with his mother. Unfortunately, Frank survives a motorcycle crash which kills her mother and he's accidentally transported into the cartoon world called the Cool World by a cartoon scientist named Dr Vincent Whiskers who invents an energy source called The Spike of Power so he can transport to the human world. Dr Whiskers somehow sees Frank as a potential hero and gets him a job as a police detective.

47 years later in Las Vegas, cartoonist Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) is working on his comic book series called Cool World, which focuses on a beautiful woman named Holli Would (Kim Basinger). It turns out that Holli has the power to transport Jack anyway she wants to because she wants to have sex with a human so she could be a human somehow. After they return to earth, they somehow began to flicker back and forth between cartoon and human forms and Holli decides to seek The Spike of Power, which for some reason has the power to merge the human and cartoon worlds while Frank Harris comes back to the real world to stop Holli.

As you can guess from this plot summary, this movie absolutely makes no sense at all. This movie has so many plot holes, contradictions, and inconsistencies that I don't know where to begin.

First of all, how does Frank Harris never age? He's been in the Cool World since 1945 yet he's still in his 20's in 1992.

Second, There's an ancient law in Cool World that humans can't have sex with cartoons yet the movie never really explores the side effects of human sexual contact with cartoons apart from Holli turning human after her sexual intercourse with Jack and both characters flickering back and fourth between forms somehow.

Third, Frank was supposed to stop Jack from having sex with Holli yet he's in a relationship with his cartoon girlfriend named Lonette. We never really learn much on how they met, where had the attraction come from, what they see in each other, and why Frank has to take the law seriously while he's in love with Lonette.

Last and worst of all, when a human has sexual contact with a cartoon, the cartoon becomes a human. But when a human is killed a cartoon, the human becomes a cartoon? How much sense does that make?

There's also too many random scenes and pointless, annoying, unfunny filler that does not advance the plot and has nothing to do with the story, such as random scenes of cartoon characters hurting each other for comic effect.

The main characters are flat and one dimensional. Holli spends much of her time shaking her butt and whining about her desires to be human. Frank's hero journey is barely accomplished since he ends up being killed off by Holli (which would later turn him into a cartoon somehow). And Jack often looks bored and confused and I don't blame Gabriel Byrne for this. Even the actors look uncomfortable with their roles.

The combination of live action and animation doesn't work either. Compare the Cool World to the Toontown sequence from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Bob Hoskins was filmed in front of a blue screen and later added in the animated footage by an optical printer. As a result, we really get the sense that Hoskins is in an animated world. That's not the case with Cool World. The actors are clearly in wooden live action sets with animation added on top of the live action, which gets pretty insulting to the audiences intelligence.

And lastly, this film has an unclear target audience and has a confused PG 13 rating. At times it's far too juvenile for adults yet at other times it's too dark and sexual for children. This film appeals to no one.

Overall, Paramount's attempt to cash in with Disney's offering with Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a complete failure and it certainly doesn't help when producers change the artist's vision without their permission. The story makes no sense, the characters are annoying and bland, and the special effects are lazy. Stick with Roger Rabbit and Mary Poppins if you wanna see a live action/animated film.

RATING 1/4