Cool World (1992)

 

Director: Ralph Bakshi

Screenplay: Michael Grais and Mark Victor

Cast: Brad Pitt as Detective Frank Harris; Kim Basinger as Holli Would; Gabriel Byrne as Jack Deebs; Charlie Adler as Nails; Candi Milo as Lonette; Deirdre O'Connell as Isabelle Malley

Obsurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

I'm allergic to clouds!

In Les Vegas 1945, Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) returns from World War II service only for a tragedy to transpire, losing his mother when on a ride on his new motorcycle they are knocked off the road. In the aftermath of this trauma, he is accidentally sucked into the strange realm of Cool World, where cartoons lives. For decades, he lives there as a detective, appointed to stop "Noids" (humans) from having sexual relations with "Doodles" (cartoons). A current problem is with the ambitious doodle Holli Would (Kim Basinger), who has machinations to seduce Noid comic book writer Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne), a former convict with mental health issues who will help her escape Cool World and experience the real world. Thus is the strange and curious premise to a film that was meant to be a major Paramount produced box office smash, a follow on from the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988).

The entire production of Cool World, as a major release with video game tie-ins to a giant standee of Holli Would being placed on the Hollywood sign, causing protests from the local community¹, makes even less sense if you stop and think about this film's very adult premise and who the director was. He was Ralph Bakski, a veteran starting in a small position at Terrytoons and eventually turning into a figure who made very adult, independent animated productions through the seventies like Heavy Traffic (1973). Paramount, because of Roger Rabbit, taking a chance on Bakski when, desiring to get back into work, he came up with a premise of a human comic book writer being terrorised by his illegitimate half human, half cartoon daughter. Bakski, never conventional yet somehow able in the seventies and eighties to have a long filmography, clearly had in mind a smaller horror hybrid of animation and live action which would have been tantalising to see in a mirror universe.

Where the production loses any sense of logic is that the deputy head of Paramount at the time Frank Mancuso, Jr., son of Paramount president Frank Mancuso, Sr., replaced the original narrative with one by Michael Grais and Mark Victor, a PG-13 release the result. Bakski was angry, still recounting how he punched Mancuso, Jr.in the face decades later even if this scene has been debated in whether it actually happened or not². In lieu to Mancuso, Jr's decision, we know in hindsight the final result, but bear in mind all I have mentioned, including the video game tie-in, or that this even has David Bowie perform the song Real Cool World for the soundtrack. The first song post-Tin Machine and even pre-Black Tie White Noise (1993) he recorded in a significant moment of his career, on a soundtrack that included Ministry, a favourite band of mine, inexplicably together to promote this film. All for a film, regardless how chastely it dances around the subject, about humans having sex with cartoons.

The result was and still is a hot mess. Bakski's Cool World, stuck helming the film in a form of purgatory, still had creative control in terms of the animation where he effectively told his staff they had carte blanche to be strange. The plot of Cool World is not as bad as it could have been for half its length. The film for that half is not actually that bad in terms of escalation. Pitt, young and like James Dean, adapts himself to Cool World, a nightmare in flesh where, with incredible background illustration, the forties man naturally becomes a detective, with the subplot that, as humans are banned from sexual relations with "doodles", his romance with his cartoon girlfriend Lonette (Candi Milo) as is an angst ridden one despite their chemistry. It is a shame, frankly, the layering of live action actors with animation is visibly sloppy, the actors not clearly acting to stand-ins, alien to a production which for the most part is actually exceptional. The strange hellscape of violent nonsense, cardboard two dimensional props and back screens have a distinct weirdness, the animations (probably too much at times) layering scenes with violent cartoon mayhem even in exposition sequences. Including the exceptional background art, where buildings are spiralling toothed monstrosities, and where even objects held by characters or driven in can turn two dimensional cardboard cut-outs is a compelling aesthetic, but one that is awkwardly met with.

Cool World itself sadly does become secondary to a plot that, by its ending, suffers the issue of so many Hollywood films of the third act devolving into events without any sense to them. Everything in Cool World itself is compelling, effectively if Toon Town from Who Framed Roger Rabbit had its own Pottersville from It's A Wonderful Life (1946), where everyone is drinking and partying or trying to kill each other. It works with a visible dankness, a mashing of the likes of classic American animation like Tex Avery to a deliberate perverseness to contrast the age rating, underscored by Pitt's sincere love for Lonette and Nails (Charlie Adler), his spider partner who comes off as one of the most charming characters for being just a lovable clutz. Even if this could no longer have been an R-rated horror film, cartoon noir openly borrowing from Who Framed Roger Rabbit would have sufficed.

The problems begin with finishing the actual main plot, a contrived and plot hole laden narrative to work with which at first works but never reaches anything interesting. Gabriel Byrne, who always deserves better in many films, has a lot he could have done as a comic book author Jack Deebs, who believes Cool World is his creation when it is Holli Would, a spoilt Marilyn Monroe pastiche, manipulating him, taking advantage of his mental state. It is never brought up, after the initial reference like a loose plot thread, he had been in jail for murdering his wife and her lover, and the entire potential edge for his character is taken away despite being something else that could have been lent on.

The premise that, together, his and Would's coitus could disrupt and blur the lines between Cool World and the real world never makes sense and is weird, in a bad way. The conclusion, in real Las Vegas, loses any of the memorable perversity of the Cool World, and it feels like a contrived failure, a great example of a major Hollywood production that feels rushed, put together for profit and only kept interesting by Bakski and the animators indulging in the finale. The result is both compelling but a frustrating experience, time leaving the animation more admirable than the film's plot. It does overload in distraction, cartoons mucking about in every Cool World sequence, but the clear sabotage done by this is the memorable detail.

An additional irony is that Basinger, as the human version of Holli Would, really does not stand out despite being the huge star being sold, practically (awkwardly) brattish when, originally, Bakshi wanting Drew Barrymore³.  The sense of trying to make Would a Jessica Rabbit figure is felt, alongside the overt sense of reference famous Hollywood blondes, Marilyn Monroe's image projected in one background scene, without the executives likely releasing the Holli Would character is a parody of such figures too. Basinger in voice acting as Would does work, with an interesting idea of a femme fatale, a doodle wanting to be human, finding whatever she can to achieve this. That the film ends with her awkwardly role-playing this character in the flesh, crow barring in a McGuffin plonked on top a Las Vegas casino weather vane, kills this though.

Cool World marked, sadly, Ralph Bakski's last theatrical film, a strange cut off point baring the cancelled one-season animated series Spicy City (1997) and the likes of the Kickstarter funded short Last Days of Coney Island (2015). What is more miserable is that, despite his reputation, his work is as not readily available outside the United States as it should be, Cool World for many beyond Fritz the Cat (1972) or The Lords of the Rings (1978) one of the first people like myself to have likely seen. That in itself is a perverse thing to consider. This final theatrical film is not as bad as its reptuation suggests but it is a not a lost classic in the slightest.

 

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1) As documented HERE

2) As documented HERE

3) As documented HERE