Cool World is a 1992 black comedy film written by Michael Grais and Mark Victor and directed by Ralph Bakshi, combining animation and live action in a fantasy world.
Frank Harris takes a motorcycle ride with his mother, but a traffic collision sends Frank to Cool World, a fantasy world inhabited by all kinds of anthropomorphic cartoon creatures, where he will become a detective and his main mission will be to prevent Holli Would, the cartoon of a gorgeous blonde, having sex with Jack Deebs, a cartoonist from the real world whom Holli has seduced, because in this way she would become a real person, something completely forbidden.
Cool World is a simple film that tried to emulate the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, using cartoon characters with real actors, but became a box office flop that only earned half of its budget.
The truth is that this is not something surprising, when watching it, we can understand that this event responds to a problem inherent to the film, because it failed in several important aspects, one of them is the most important when creating a commercial film: define the target audience.
In the same way that the characters in the movie debate between the real world and the fantasy world, Cool World doesn't decide between taking an adult or childish approach, and I'm not saying that because of the cartoons.
The film is a black comedy that from its plot announces an adult theme, but the humor and different situations are still typical of children's cartoons. The sexualization of the characters and the darkness of the plot are not coherently accompanied, and the result is a uniform and unbalanced proposal.
The other weakness of the film is in the way the cartoons and the actors are integrated in the same scene, which although not bad, is not perfect either. However, we must take into consideration the time in which this film was released. Perhaps the film's biggest problem is the ghost of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the seemingly inevitable comparison to Zemeckis film has not been good for this film.
But not everything is negative, Cool World also has interesting things, Gabriel Byrne's performance is good, Holli Woud's cartoon is outstanding, personally I really enjoyed watching Kim Basinger with a "what the hell am I doing here?" face, well, I really enjoyed watching Kim Basinger, also a good soundtrack among which Real Cool World stands out, a song that David Bowie composed especially for the movie. Brad Pitt also appears as one of the main characters of the movie, but his character is not as charismatic as in other works of the actor.
It's a one hour and thirty-eight minute film, so it really doesn't get boring at any point.
Despite the fact that this film ended director Ralph Bakshi's career in theaters and was unanimously rejected at the time of its release, it is now considered a cult film for part of the audience.
Let me know in the comments what you think of the film, and if you haven't seen it yet, let me know if you'd be interested in seeing it or why you'd rather see something else.
A crime drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.