Cool World

Shout Select did a special Blu-Ray Edition of the film, so I thought it was worth a second look. The accompanying featurette points out the film has gained a LOT of fans in the decades intervening, and so I'm rewatching it with that in mind as well as the fact that Ralph Bakshi no longer disowns it. The other thing I am mindful of is how absolutely unforgiving I currently am of bad writing. I used to let SO much slide. So my thought was "Even if the movie is better than it is given credit for chances are I'll hate it just because the script is probably bad".

First off, the script IS bad. But the interesting thing is that it's not appreciably worse than other hit movie scripts of the era. Yes, the script is embarrassing. But I will strenuously argue BOTH Tim Burton Batman films had scripts this bad, as did Jurassic Park. Really, if you want to get down to it, the 1980's and early 90's were terrible times for movie writing. Even the most popular movies had awful scripts, and you simply dug them for other reasons. Yes, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Crying Game, The Shawshank Redemption, The Princess Bride, and Pulp Fiction were things at the time. They were also rarities for having strong scripts.

So, no, I'm not going to overly penalize the film for having a script on the exact level of Batman 89. But the truth is the film still doesn't work. What is the problem?

The direction is fine. The live action is shakier than the animation, but Ralph Bakshi is surprisingly competent there. The set designs and animated backgrounds are amazing and unlike any other film you've ever seen before. And the soundtrack is killer. David Bowie did the end credits song. How cool is that?

But the film refuses to work. What is the actual problem?

It's the acting, specifically Kim Basinger as Holli Would. In the accompanying featurette Bakshi and Frank Mancuso Jr. claim Basinger is the heart and soul of the picture. But if you ask me, her Razzie Award was well-earned. She is awful. Not remotely convincing as a cartoon OR a real person.

Gabriel Byrne sucks too, although for less defined reasons. I get that Jack Deebs is an ex-convict who just got out prison for killing the guy who slept with his wife, but even still, Byrne is SO unlikable in the role and a total dirtbag. He isn't overacting the way Basinger is. But he feels very much in over his head.

How sure am I that it's the acting that damns the movie? Positive. Because Brad Pitt does a great job, and the scenes with Frank Harris and Lonette, as badly written as they are, are fine.

I said in an earlier review of this film that the free-flowing background animation feels a bit like animated diarrhea, and Bakshi throwing crap against the wall and seeing what would stick. As such it's a very visually interesting movie at all times. People at the time accused the animation of looking cheap, simply because it didn't blend into the 3-D world the way it did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. People complaining about that are missing the point of the animation style. Roger Rabbit was about bringing cartoon characters into our reality. Cool World is about bringing real people into an animated 2-D non-reality. The sets are flat for this reason, and the animation and live-action doesn't blend. It's not supposed to. Roger Rabbit wanted there to be a realistic feel to what was going on in L.A.. Cool World is deliberately designed to jar the viewer and make them feel an unreality to everything they are seeing. So no, I will not hear complaints against the visuals effects or the animation. It is working exactly as intended.

The ending is ridiculous, (it actually seems to be channeling Night On Bald Mountain from Fantasia of all things) but really, the movie is almost over, and my brain is shut off already, and I'm beyond caring. Maybe if the script were solid up until it goes nuts, I'd have more negative notes. But this is the script where Ralph Bakshi insists the main character can only be allowed to become a real person if she has sex with a man. The script already had its own problems, all right?

I like Nails and Doc Whiskers, and I always have. But I take special unpleasant note of Holli's Goons this time out. I never liked them, but there is an extra unsavory element to them in 2023. Maybe because one of them feels very transphobic, which is a classic Bakshi problem. But the film feels dirtier and more perverted than it is whenever they are onscreen.

So that was Cool World. Still not giving it a good review. And I'm a little annoyed that this script is talked SO much trash about considering what junk people from that era also tolerated. I will argue to the death that Cool World's script is ten times more solid than The Goonies'. And if you like The Goonies (and crazily many people seem to) you have no standing to talk smack about this. 2 stars.

The Wild Minds Of Cool World

The interviews with Ralph Bakshi and Kim Basinger were fine, but the thing about this featurette that blows my mind is how awesome a person Frank Mancuso Jr. is. Bakshi's opinion on the film, which he previously disowned was largely negative due to his experience with Mancuso, and I took his anger at him at face value. In reality, I feel like Mancuso sounds like the most down-to-Earth producer possible, and very in-tune and concerned about what the actors needed. That a rare and valuable thing to see in a producer. And the compromises he talks about having to make actually make sense, and if somebody on the picture was being unreasonable back in the day, it was probably Bakshi.

That being said, as open and welcoming as Mancuso is to live-action actors, so is Bakshi to voice actors and animators. Mancuso had a great observation. Cool World seemed to be made to be enjoyed by animators. Which is both part of its charm and its main difficulty in connecting with everyone else. It's both why it's gotten a cult following and why it couldn't find an audience in theaters when it was released.

I can't say enough good things about Mancuso. The story of his daughter buying the Cool World crew jacket in the junk shop is delightful, as was him relating his excitement to showing the movie to David Bowie and having him write a song for it. Knowing David Bowie, he probably thought the movie sucked (dude was embarrassingly honest about things like that). It's to his credit he wrote a great and fitting song anyways.

That was a great featurette. 5 stars.

Trailers

Back in 1992, I was obsessed with Cool World trailers and TV spots. I recorded them on VHS whenever possible and watched them over and over again. Yeah, the movie itself is a let-down, but it played for two weeks in the theater near me and I saw it twice. And I'm probably one of the few people on Earth who can claim to have seen this specific movie twice in the theater. But I also saw The Adventures Of Elmo In Grouchland in the theater four times as well, so my theater habits back then were notably weird.

But the trailers and TV spots slayed me. So much weird stuff is happening, and the characters are saying bold and iconic-seeming lines. And the music is out there, man. I wish they had included the TV spots as well, but me finally owning that bananas Brave New Cool World trailer on disc makes the Blu-Ray worth every penny I spent on it. 5 stars.