Post by ronnierocketago on Mar 8, 2009 5:00:00 GMT
COOL WORLD (1992) - *1/2
Whenever I can, I defend Ralph Balkshi. Not one of his biggest fans, but I do admire that for the 1970s/80s he was an American filmmaker (besides maybe the dudes behind HEAVY METAL) who apparently got animated projects greenlighted, funded, and produced that wasn't the Disney monopoly. He tried to show that animation wasn't just for kids, but could actually be a different storytelling canvas presentable for adult audiences from the sci-fi/fantasy WIZARDS to Jews/blaxploitation HEAVY TRAFFIC to the musical AMERICAN POP and indeed for better (WIZARDS) or for worse (LORD OF THE RINGS) he heavily pushed rotoscoping as an alternative design tool for that genre. Also before Japanese Hentai got imported to the states, his FRITZ THE CAT was one of the few public avenues of which horny perverted teens could jerk off to a cartoon back in the day, and maybe even inspired that whole bizarre sexual fetish about animals looking like humans.
Hey don't blame me, blame wikipedia.
But I can't defend him on COOL WORLD, though I guess it wasn't his fault. If Balkshi is to be believed, his original concept sold to Paramount Pictures was simply about a cartoonist (Brad Pitt) who enters his own created "Cool World" where he does the nasty with a "doodle," which conceived a psychopathic hybrid toon/human (Drew Barrymore) who enters the real world to get revenge on Pitt for abandoning them or something. A promising premise, to be sure. I mean think about it, this universe which he granted existence by his mere pen, where beings are only allowed to be as one-dimensional or archetypal as their God allows them to be, and then he creates a life the old fashion way matures into a unique, forceful personality who demands much more from her limiting world.
In short, an individual. Anyway, the studio fired Barrymore, replaced her with Kim Basinger, took the script away from Bakshi, recasted Pitt in another new part, Gabriel Bryne takes over, or your usual Hollywood nonsense. Balshi's most insane anecdote was when Basinger (who supposedly took over COOL WORLD) was telling him of how she wanted to be proud of WORLD, and like show it to cancer kids in hospitals.
What the fuck? Seriously, the being proud part is nice and all, but I'm pretty sure COOL WORLD was never intended for the kids like Balkshi's WIZARDS or his 1980s MIGHTY MOUSE cartoon (though the latter did have an infamously overblown controversy back in the day because some stupid parents thought Mighty Mouse snorted cocaine in an episode). But COOL WORLD was a low key party for his fellow subversive outsiders that gets hijacked by the stupid jocks with their booze and meth, and they stick him with the check.
I think the most obvious problem with WORLD when you watch (if you really hate yourself) is how it jams together two completely different stories that just don't belong to each other, and it's just a mangled narrative like a car wreck if at the least because none of it makes any goddamn sense. Either I guess could have been the grounds for a decent picture, but not handcuffed. First off, you get this 1940s prologue where Brad Pitt somehow crashes that kills his mother and gets his ass transported to said title universe by a toon scientist, who warns him not to fuck around literally with his new neighbors. Why?
Why you looking at me? That's why I asked, for shit if anyone knows why. I mean is there a Toon Bible that forbids inter-racial fornication between toon and human"noids" or is it just a regional legal-sanctioning racist thing like Alabama back in the day? Yes, as a Southerner I'm making a backwards racial-acceptance joke against Alabama, but that's only because I'm from the state who's only truely bad thing was forming the Ku Klux Klan. OK I'll shut up now. But really, considering how catastrophic in threatening to destroy both real and cool world are, how did that population know that such screwing was bad in the first place? Whatever.
So Pitt is apparently immortal and never ages in Cool World for we then cut to the 1990s where recently paroled cartoonist Bryne is enjoying his new freedom from getting frequently raped in the showers. Two things come to mind that begs me speechless. For one thing, how does a convicted murderer get space and resources to actually produce a legitimate comic book, much less a company willing to publish them? Two, he supposedly created Cool World despite that place obviously existing before Bryne's time, so what gives? Don't give me that "subliminal interdimensional artistic influence" garbage, for....nah fuck it, I won't bother trying to understand the basic logic of this movie anymore. No I won't, it's not worth it. You try to figure it out, and if you do, e-mail me.
Anyway, Bryne enters Cool World himself and plays the Beast with Two Backs with Basinger's blonde bombshell toon, which transform her into real. Why? They both then get sucked back into the real world Huh? She then heads to Las Vegas to which she will combine both worlds at a hotel that she had heard in legend back home and umm, err....I'm sorry folks, but I just tried and failed to comprehend COOL WORLD again. I promise I won't do it again, but I just can't help but try and fail to figure out the laws (or lack thereof) here. If COOL WORLD wanted to be as incomprehensible and retarded like a cartoon.....well they succeeded.
Yet not even the toons themselves within Cool World itself are entertaining. It's almost like Bakshi or whoever took over this production watched WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT and wanted to outdo that one in the human/toon zanyness comedy, and they do with a combo of steroids, meth, coke, and a fresh carton of Red Bull. It's just too random, too much, and lack any charm or intellectual curiosity what so ever for me, that I quickly didn't give a shit about those grotesque drawings destroying each other, not even a laugh when I'm supposed to I guess. Interestingly, after he lost the project, Bakshi farmed out the animation from his studio because he admittedly couldn't give enough of a shit to even work on that personally. When an animator wants nothing to do with the animation in a movie of his, I would think your movie is in big trouble.
You know what the most painful thing though about COOL WORLD? The live-action scenes. Yes I hated the Cool World, but at least those toons were at times visually interesting, if briefly, to look at in spite of their failure to entertain or interest me. At least someone tried in that department. But those sequences in the real world are just painful. This is due to a combination between Bakshi's filmatic strength obviously not in live-action, and him obviously not wanting to put serious effort into scenes he was forced by contract to shoot. I can't really honestly blame the guy, but really they're interesting in how he's not just bored with this crap, but seems to try to be as minimal as possible in staging, execution, and acting without Paramount realizing that he just turned the camera on and left for a smoke or snack. I'm reminded of a MAD TV sketch from years back where Chris Columbus was shooting random stuff in haste this side of Ed Wood for his first HARRY POTTER picture because "it'll make a fortune no matter what I do."
That was a lame joke of mine, but once you see COOL WORLD, maybe I'm telling the truth, I don't know. I would hate to think that Bakshi did try, only to fail spectacularly. Consider that seizure-inducing "comedy" where Basinger tries her cartoonish Marilyn Monroe shtick at a real world nightclub, and it's a disater for her and the audience, for it's neither funny nor sexy. Here at least I'm sure Bakshi basically said visually that he didn't give a fuck anymore. It's so bad, you'll retroactively wished Michael Keaton had dropped her ass off that church roof in BATMAN, or her L.A. CONFIDENTIAL Oscar revoked.
I hate this movie, I really do, but there was one good thing about COOL WORLD, and that's Pitt. His material is garbage and he obviously knows it, but with nothing he puts forth a James Dean-esque sexual physical charisma while he's also the sole cop in Cool World. Maybe Hollywood screwed up by not producing that James Dean biopic in the early 1990s when Pitt was contracted, for I'm sure he would have hit a homerun with it. Oh well. Bryne's a damn good actor, but he forever looks lost as if he had signed on to another picture, but accidentally walked upon this one.
Pitt's character does have one...wait for it...interesting trait, which for COOL WORLD standards is like mind-blowing. Anyway, because of that discriminatory toon/noid legal code, it's implied that he and his doodle mistress "pretend," which....well let your mind do the sex physics for you, and it makes sense in a twisted sort of way.
And remember, Basinger wanted to proudly show this picture to sick kids in hospitals. Shit, Alec Baldwin was maybe right after all.
I'm gonna spoil the movie, so you won't fret, but Pitt enters the real world to stop Basinger, she kills him, he returns to Cool World as a toon and that couple fucks happily ever. Good for them. But really, I wonder that even if Bakshi's vision had been followed through in the first place, would his COOL WORLD even have found an audience 1992 America, when Public Correctness was becoming rabidly ridiculous? I mean there was a time in the 1960s and 70s where softcore or even X-rated animated porn would have found their niche mainstream crowds, but with Japan opening up their (fucked up) hentai vaults and the dumbed down "animation-only-for-kids" doctrine still popular (only 3 years before TOY STORY), I'm sure COOL WORLD would have flopped regardless.
But at least we wouldn't have gotten this.