Cool World (1992)
…………………………………………………
Cool World Movie Review
Cool World is a 1992 live-action/animated fantasy thriller film directed by Ralph Bakshi and starring Kim Basinger and Gabriel Byrne. It’s such a silly film.
………………………………………………….
“I’m leaving, pencil-dick!
You just try and stop me!“
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
It follows a cartoonist who gets transported to an animated world and is seduced by a sexy female cartoon character who wants to be real. The main problem with this movie is that it obviously tries to rip off ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ and it’s simply never as strong in any single aspect. It was just a bad attempt to cash in on that film’s success.
The story is convoluted and frankly even stupid. Yes, the movie is very entertaining at times given its subject matter and its overall world building, but it’s more fun and funny for the wrong than the right reasons as it can be considered campy entertainment.
Now, Gabriel Byrne is so horrible in the main role that he brings the entire film down with him. He’s so poor and he never managed to give a proper performance. Kim Basinger and Brad Pitt who are otherwise good actors are also very weak here, and honestly the movie overall is terribly acted.
But the animation surely is nice. There is no denying the power of this film’s imagination as the animated movements are very fluid and the character animation is also rather authentic and vivid in its designs. This is the only area where the movie showed some true potential, but it was crushed by every other stupid decision besides it.
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
Cool World is overlong for such a simple story, and it tries to be a thrilling thriller film, but it entirely fails in that regard. Its sex scenes are pointless and more silly than erotic. And I found the entire movie repetitive and going nowhere. The same goes for the dialogue which is frankly rather mediocre. The characterization is also bad, and only the animated characters are somewhat memorable with the humans being so poor. Yes, this is Bakshi’s worst movie, even worse than ‘Heavy Traffic’, and it’s a shame that he ended his feature career on this mediocrity.
Cool World has very good, imaginative animation. But that’s about it. Everything else here is so bad starting with terrible acting across the board. The characters, especially humans, are so mediocre, the dialogue is weak and the overall story is badly constructed, unoriginal and entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons. It’s the director’s worst film.
