Cool World
This movie had so much potential.
After the runaway success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which I wrote about two weeks ago), the time was ripe for a dark live action/animation movie. Enter Ralph Bakshi, director of Fritz the Cat (the first animated movie to ever receive an X rating), and later Spicy City (the first animated TV series for adults, beating South Park by several months). Bakshi had the idea for a live action/animation horror movie starring Drew Barrymore, which would explore a human and a cartoon conceiving a child, who would then travel to the real world to murder the father who abandoned her.
If this doesn’t sound like my tl;dr summary, don’t worry. Bakshi’s initial concept was heavily rewritten during pre-production and the final project was radically different. The film’s producer, Frank Mancuso Jr., best known for the Friday the 13th franchise, had stated a desire to move away from horror movies. Instead of choosing to produce a non-horror movie, he took the movie he had and rewrote all the horror elements out of it.
By the time Cool World was released it was a PG-13 mess. Gone were the horror elements. Drew Barrymore (still in her rebellious phase in 1992) was replaced with Kim Basinger, a more bankable star at the time. When Bakshi found out about the rewrites (which had happened without his knowledge), he threatened to quit and only stayed on when Paramount threatened to sue him. Bakshi finished the film, but to no one’s satisfaction.
Which is a shame, because there’s a lot of talent and potential on display here. Cool World stars Kim Basinger still in her prime, a pre-Usual Suspects Gabriel Byrne, and a Legends of the Fall-era Brad Pitt, looking pretty in his 1940s pompadour. Bakshi’s animation style is top-notch and still holds up today.
The backgrounds look like paintings and the world is well-imagined with all manner of cartoon characters (voiced by people like Maurice LaMarche of Futurama fame, or Charles Adler, who voiced Buster Bunny in Tiny Toons).The only time the animation suffers is when the animators were given free reign to “draw whatever they want,” which distracts from the main plot more often than it helps.
I’ve written before on who gets the blame when movies go wrong. In my opinion, the blame for the brilliant mess that is Cool World falls squarely on producer Mancuso. Cool World’s premise is brilliant and Bakshi’s original concept was worth exploring. But by the time the movie was released, the movie made no sense. There’s some semblance of a story, but the tone is all over the place. Instead of a straightforward horror movie as Bakshi intended, the Cool World we got veered back and forth between sexy thriller and madcap comedy. Kim Basinger plays sexpot-Jessica-Rabbit Holli Would as best she can, but her squad of goons distract the audience anytime they’re on screen.
As a fan of Bakshi’s I wanted to like this movie in 1992 and I wanted to like it now. However, the sheer amount of movie studio meddling gave us a subpar movie that doesn’t live up to its premise. Cool World was Bakshi’s last full-length movie; he spends his time these days with TV and short films. Which is a shame; until someone comes along and remakes it, we only have the wiki synopsis as a testament to what this movie could have been.
tl;drs
Quick summary: Holli Would (Kim Basinger) is a doodle living in Cool World, but more than anything she desires to be real. She has that opportunity when Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) gets released from prison. While in jail, Deebs wrote a series of “Cool World” comics, thinking he created the world. When he’s transported to the real Cool World, Deebs finds out just how wrong he is.
Too many writers? Two writers seems fine for a movie; where the film suffers is from the outside meddling. The producer heavily rewrote the film before production, which drastically altered the director’s original vision.
Recommended if you like: Other works by Ralph Bakshi, like Fritz the Cat or Lord of the Rings.
Better than I expected? The animation still looks stunning, twenty years later.
Worse than I hoped? While the movie hasn’t aged particularly horribly, neither has it improved over time. The zaniness of all the background characters is distracting.
Would it work better in a different medium? Cool World is a movie I wouldn’t mind a remake of. I’d love to see Bakshi’s original concept updated for 2015.
Verdict: Cool World had an interesting premise that was destroyed by everyone needing to water down the movie with their own ideas.
Related Reading: Wiki article,
