Cool World (1992)

A comic strip femme fatale seeks to seduce her cartoonist creator in order to cross over into the real world.

Director:

Ralph Bakshi

Writers:

Michael Grais, Mark Victor

Stars:

Gabriel Byrne, Kim Basinger, Brad Pitt

2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Kim Basinger	...	Holli Would
Gabriel Byrne	...	Jack Deebs
Brad Pitt	...	Detective Frank Harris
Michele Abrams	...	Jennifer Malley
Deirdre O'Connell	...	Isabelle Malley
Janni Brenn	...	Agatha Rose Harris (as Janni Brenn-Lowen)
William Frankfather	...	Cop
Greg Collins	...	Cop
Maurice LaMarche	...	Interrogator #2 / Mash / drunken bar patron / Dr. Vincent "Vegas Vinnie" Whiskers / Jack Deebs (super hero version) (voice)
Joey Camen	...	Interrogator #1 / Slash / Holli's door (voice)
Michael David Lally	...	Sparks (voice)
Carrie Hamilton	...	Comic Bookstore Cashier
Stephen Worth	...	Bash (performance model) / Comic Store Patron
Murray Podwal	...	Store Patron
Jenine Jennings	...	Holli Would / Lonette (performance model) / Craps Bunny (voice)

Storyline

When cartoonist Jack Deebs was behind bars, he found escape by creating "Cool World", a cartoon series featuring a voluptuous femme fatale named Holli Would. But the cartoonist becomes a prisoner of his own fantasies when Holli transports Jack into Cool World with a scheme to seduce him and bring herself to life. A hard-boiled detective--the only other human in Cool World--cautions Jack with the law: Noids (humans) don't have sex with doodles (cartoons). However, the flesh proves weaker than ink as Holli takes human form in Las Vegas, staring in a trans-universal chase that threatens the destruction of both worlds. With a splashy combination of animation and live-action sequences, "Cool World" delivers the hottest action around.

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Plot Keywords:

cartoonist | femme fatale | sex | erotica | sexuality | 

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Taglines:

There are two different worlds: The Real World and the Wacky, Animated World. Only one of them will survive.

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Genres:

Animation | Comedy | Fantasy

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for language and sensuality

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

10 July 1992 (USA)

Also Known As:

Cool World: Una rubia entre dos mundos

Filming Locations:

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$30,000,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$14,110,600

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bakshi Animation,Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

102 min 147 min (workprint)

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Despite the film's less than stellar performance, its soundtrack gained critical acclaim and popularity which consists of electronic dance and rock songs by David Bowie, Moby, Neil Tennant and Mark Isham, the film's composer.

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Goofs

When Frank is examining the crime scene of Nails' 'murder', there is a chalk outline of Nail's body on the ground. However, Holli 'inked' Nails and sucked him into a fountain pen, so there would have been no body to draw an outline around.

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Quotes

Frank Harris: [sees Nails sniffling] Nails, this is no time to catch a cold.
Nails: It's not a cold, boss. I'm allergic to clouds.
Frank Harris: WHAT?

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Alternate Versions

When shown on the sci-fi channel, the following scenes have been cut:

• When sparks encounters doodle children in the alley he releases little coins with fangs that attacks them, they only show him say "I hate it when she meets guys without telling me".
• While being chased by the popper police, Slash (the baby-like doodle) urinates on them: they only show the popper police get hit by the train
• While waiting for the doodle telephone to get to Frank, Nails bites into his desk
• The sex scene between Holli Would and Jack Deebs has been altered and some footage has been deleted
• After Nails was "penned' by Holli, Frank encounters Sparks and knocks his french fries out of his hand, Sparks responded with "now you can buy me more fries, dick-head", but it was changed to "now you can buy me more fries pinhead"
• At the end, Holli's "pencildick" remark is deleted.

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Connections

Features Let's Make Love (1960)

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Soundtracks

N.W.O.
Written and Performed by Ministry
Courtesy of Sire Records
by arrangement with Warner Special Products

User Reviews

Not a very good movie, but an interesting one that is worth seeing at least once

Here's my review of Ralph Bakshi's 1992 Paramount Picture "Cool World", starring Brad Pitt, Gabriel Byrne, & Kim Basinger.

I won't give a plot synthesis, as that would spoil the fun. Instead, I'll cut straight to the chase and give you my brutally honest opinion on this film. I'll start with my view on the widely-held opinion that "Cool World" is a rip-off of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Even though "Cool World" is undeniably Roger Rabbit-esquire, and Brad Pitt said in an interview that "'Cool World' is like 'Roger Rabbit' on acid", sexy cartoon women and combining live-action and animation have been staples of Bakshi's films before Gary K. Wolf even created Roger Rabbit. "Cool World" reminds me more of "Gremlins 2: The New Batch", because A: The rule that noids (humans) and doodles (cartoon characters) can not have sex with each other is similar to the 3 rules for owning a Mogwai because they are ancient sacred rules that must not be broken, lest cartoon-type chaos wreck havoc, & B: Holli's goons (Slash, Bash, Mash and Bob) reminded me of Gizmo's 2nd batch of offspring (Mohawk, Daffy, George and Lenny).

Anyway, there are a lot of things wrong with this movie. First of all, there are lots of plot holes and plot points that are never fully explained. This might be fun for those with imagination, but most would find it lazy and rushed. Kim Basinger is a pretty lousy actress in this movie. True, her character Holli Would was meant to be hated, but the doodle and noid versions of Holli look and behave so differently it's almost hard to believe that they're the same character. Gabriel Byrne plays a pretty dull character in this film, and only part I was interested in Jack was when he became a super-powered doodle, and that wasn't even Gabe voicing Super Jack, it was Maurice LaMarche (who is based known as the voice of Brain from 'Pinky and the Brain'). Also, the combination of live-action and animation is not nearly as smooth (in both the way the cartoons are placed onto the live-action and in the live-action actors' interactions and responses to the cartoon characters that are added later) as it was in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and similar films like "Space Jam" and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" and "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle". To top it all off, the whole film just feels dated, even for 1992, I guess partly due to it using ink-and-paint-on-cells instead of digital ink-and-paint, which even Bakshi's protégés at the Ren and Stimpy show were able to afford on an animated TV series budget and use in several episodes of its 2nd season, which premiered only a few months after "Cool World"'s release.

But the disaster this film ended up being is actually not entirely Ralph Bakshi's fault. Ralph's original script for this had Holli (originally called Debbie Dallas) and Jack having a son who was a strange combination of live-action and animated body parts and who hated himself for what he was & what he wasn't and attempted to murder his father. But producer Frank Mancuso Junior (whose father, Frank Mancuso Senior, was then the head of Paramount Pictures) had the script completely rewritten which heavily muted the film's messages of the importance of fatherhood and the dangers of casual sex, and hired Kim Basinger (who was a pain in the butt during shooting and ruined the movie even more) and Gabriel Byrne (whom Bakshi felt was too much a foreigner to play an American underground cartoonist) when Bakshi wanted Drew Barrymore and Brad Pitt to play the leads.

But even with Mancuso's bastardizing Bakshi's original vision for the film, there are still some things in "Cool World" to enjoy. For one, the animation is mostly quite good and reminded me at times of Tiny Toons and Ren & Stimpy. Also, Brad Pitt does a rather decent job acting in this picture (despite his interactions with cartoon characters leaving a good amount to be desired, as he's no Bob Hoskins) as his character Frank Harris is rather likable. Also, Harris's arachnid doodle partner Nails is a delightful nutty character voiced by Charlie Adler, my personal favorite voice-over actor who has done many of my most favorite cartoon characters like Buster Bunny, Cow and Chicken, Ickis, Ed and Bev Bighead and many more. The secondary and minor doodles like Lonette (whom I consider a much more desirable woman than Holli due to her being a brunette and having a caring personality), the aforementioned Goons, Sparks and Doc Whiskers are all interesting (plus they're voiced by greats like Candi Milo and the aforementioned Maurice LaMarche), as are the noids Jennifer and Isabelle Malley. Too bad they're kind of stuck in the background. And there are quite a few memorable laugh-out moments that make this film worth seeing at least once IMHO.

So in the end, although this film would be perfect for Mystery Science Theater 3000, I still find "Cool World" interesting and enjoyable. It's certainly not as great as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", I'm not quite sure if I find it better than "Space Jam" and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" and I definitely find it better than the well-intended but ultimately lame "Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" movie (despite AoR&B having better production values than CW). All in all, "Cool World"'s not a very good, but it is very interesting and I recommend that everyone should watch it at least once (but it's not for the immature and/or overly sensitive).

Look out for: Future Ren & Stimpy producer Steve Worth in a cameo as a comic book store patron (he's the fat guy), and also for Maggie "Maude Flanders" Roswell.