COOL WORLD

 

My official ex-rental big box VHS video of Cool World (© Ralph Bakshi/Bakshi Animation/Paramount Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Ever since I first saw the Disney classics Mary Poppins at the cinema in the mid-1960s and Bedknobs and Broomsticks there in the early 1970s (not to mention in later years their wonderful Latin American-flavoured Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros), I have always been a big fan of live-action/animation mash-up fantasy movies. Among my all-time favourite examples from this genre (and which I own both as a DVD and as an ex-rental big box VHS video), however, is one that I consider to be vastly under-rated (especially by film critics) – Cool World, which I rewatched earlier today.

Directed by legendary American animator/painter Ralph Bakshi, and released in 1992 by Paramount Pictures, Cool World opens in Las Vegas during 1945, when American WW2 army soldier Frank Harris (played by Brad Pitt), newly returned home after being demobbed, takes his mother for a ride on his brand-new motorbike, but tragically they are soon involved in a horrific motoring accident caused by a drunk automobile driver in which Frank's mother is killed – and although Frank survives, he finds himself abruptly and mystifyingly jettisoned from our live-action world into a strange and often bizarre animated alternate dimension known as the Cool World, which is populated entirely by living cartoon characters called doodles – except for a single exception, that is.

For although he now inhabits an animated world and is surrounded on all sides by doodles, Frank resolutely remains a live-action human, or noid. Neither able nor interested anyway (after having lost his mother) in returning to his own live-action world, Frank reconciles himself to a whole new life here in the Cool World, where he becomes a tough, hard-nosed, film noiresque detective working with the local doodle police force, and assigned as his law-enforcing sidekick a chatty but friendly giant spider doodle named Nails (voiced by Charlie Adler).

Over four decades pass by, it is now 1992, but Frank remains the same age as he was on that fateful, deeply traumatic day in 195 when he entered the Cool World. Moreover, he also remains the only noid in the Cool World, but he has gained a doodle girlfriend named Lonette (voiced by Candi Milo) Unfortunately for them, however, their relationship has to remain strictly platonic – for whereas if a noid and a doodle have sex the doodle can then become a noid, there is also a considerable risk that the Cool World and the live-action world will entangle with one another, becoming unstable and experiencing devastating consequences.

Back in our live-action world, meanwhile, an underground comic-book cartoonist named Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) is about to be released from prison after serving 10 years for murdering a man who had slept with his wife. During his sentence, Jack had kept himself occupied by drawing what had gone on to become a new bestselling comic book series that he had named Cool World, and which had appeared to him in dreams and visions.

Jack did not realise, however, that the animated world he'd been drawing actually existed, and had done so long before he'd first dreamed of it. Moreover, he had no idea that one particular character he thought was his own creation already existed for real in the real Cool World – a certain bold and buxom blonde aptly named Holli Would. For Holli not only could but also most assuredly would do whatever it took to achieve her ultimate goal – to become a noid, a live-action human.

And indeed, it was Holli who had sent Jack his dreams and visions of the Cool World. For what better way to achieve her goal, regardless of the dangerous risks that such a dramatic transformation may entail for the two worlds, than to seduce a naïve noid who mistakenly thought that he'd created her – poor unsuspecting Jack! (She had already tried to seduce Frank, but he had always rebuffed her amorous advances.)

So Holli duly lures Jack into the Cool World where, like a latter-day Pygmalion, and in spite of being confronted by Frank and warned in no uncertain terms of the possible dire consequences of noid-doodle intimacy, Jack falls headlong for headstrong Holli, who swiftly beguiles the carnal cartoonist into making out – and thereby making her a noid!

Thereafter, events take a number of very tumultuous turns, with a now thoroughly unstable Holli in every sense, constantly flickering back and forth from noid to doodle to noid again, determined to ensure that she remains a noid permanently – by harnessing the magical transformative potency of the Spike of Power.

Years earlier, this mystical artifact serving as a portal between the two worlds had been brought into the live-action world by a doodle named Dr Vincent Whiskers, aka Vegas Vinnie, who had utilized it to cross over from the Cool World into Las Vegas, whereupon he had purchased the Union Plaza Hotel there in the guise of Vegas Vinnie for the express purpose of concealing the Spike within the hotel's enormous neon name-sign on its roof's tower, where amidst all the glitz and glamour of Vegas those who may wish to utilize the Spike's power for evil or dangerous purposes would never find it. (Moreover, it later transpires that it was one of Dr Whiskers's early experiments with the Spike in the Cool World that had unexpectedly opened a portal into the live-action world and had sucked Frank through it into the Cool World straight after the motoring accident.)

Consequently, Holli launches a frenzied attempt to clamber up the tower to reach the Spike and release its power, with Jack and Frank begrudgingly joining forces in a valiant bid to stop her, but Holli pushes Frank off the tower, causing him to plummet to his apparent death far below. At the tower's summit, Holli finally seizes the Spike, but as soon as she does so a horde of monstrous doodles are instantly released from the Cool World, pouring forth into Vegas, whose surroundings and citizens in close proximity to the Spike begin morphing and warping, while Jack unfathomably transforms into a super-hero doodle!

Against this backdrop of apocalyptic bedlam, but courtesy of his ultra-powerful doodle alter ego, Jack nevertheless succeeds in capturing Holli and hauling her back into the Cool World, together with the Spike of Power, whereupon the monsters invading Vegas promptly disappear, and the city reverts to its normal stable state. But what about Frank – is he really dead?

Luckily for our taciturn hero, at the precise moment when she had pushed him off the tower Holli had flickered back into a doodle, and it just so happens that if a doodle fatally attacks a noid in the live-action world, the noid is not killed but is instead transformed into a living doodle in the Cool World, Consequently, that is precisely what and where Frank is now – a very much alive doodle equivalent of his former live-action self, and back in the Cool World.

So too on both counts is the treacherous Holli, and this time permanently. For although she is still a potentially dangerous doodle, there are no noids present in the Cool World any more for her to attempt to seduce as a means of becoming a noid and escaping again into the live-action world to wreak further havoc. Instead, she is now partnered in the Cool World to Jack in his eminently boastful and incredibly boring doodle super-hero form – a fate so dreadful that one almost feels sorry for her…almost.

In short, with the doodle monsters vanquished in Vegas, and the two worlds saved from mutual destruction, all is live and active again in the live-action world, and all is cool again in the Cool World. Moreover, with Frank now a doodle just like Lonette, there is no longer any barrier to their romance blossoming fully – and in the fullness of time no doubt giving rise to the patter of non-platonic tiny doodle feet…

Cool World is marvelously inventive, brilliantly imaginative, and decidedly surreal, its vibrant, eye-popping visuals (most especially those within the Cool World itself) are as daring as they are dazzling, veritably psychedelic at times, and its countless live-action/animation interactions are well-synced throughout; Kim Basinger and Brad Pitt in particular play their respective dual voiced-doodle/live-action-noid roles of Holli and Frank with great conviction; and the movie soundtrack is full of memorable tracks by the likes of Moby, The Future Sound of London, Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, and Ministry, as well as a hip background score by Mark Isham, and even a song, 'Real Cool World', written exclusively for it and performed over its end credits by none other than David Bowie.

Consequently, with so much seemingly going for it, I was nothing if not surprised to discover recently that what for me will always remain a hugely enjoyable movie actually bombed at the box office, Cool World making a lifetime gross of only US$14.1 million against a reported budget of US$28 million. Why? What went wrong?

Two principal reasons seem to be indicated here. The first is that as a live-action/animation mash-up movie, Cool World may have followed too closely upon the metaphorical heels of Disney's unequivocal mash-up masterpiece Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which had been released a mere four years earlier in 1988 to universal acclaim, and had stupendously grossed at the box office seven times its US$50 million budget. Any movie from the same genre attempting to follow in the colossal big-screen footsteps of that cinematic blockbuster was almost guaranteed to be found wanting by comparison in the eyes of critics and public audiences alike.

Even so, Cool World may have received a more enthusiastic response from both of those categories of viewers had it not fallen foul of what I personally consider to be a second major reason for its box-office debacle. Just like its principal doodle character Holli, during its progression from concept to completion Cool World transformed – dramatically.

For although not widely realized today outside movie-buff circles, director Bakshi had originally planned Cool World not as the relatively tame PG13-rated film that was ultimately released (and which fatefully ensured, therefore, that it would be compared directly with Who Framed Roger Rabbit) but instead as something very different – an adult-oriented R/18-rated live-action/animation horror movie! In other words, a production much more akin in tone and content to earlier Bakshi movies like the fully-animated Fritz the Cat (1972) and Hey Good Lookin' (1982, which had initially contained some live-action sequences before these were eliminated pre-release in favour of it being another fully-animated feature).

However, even though they did formally accept Bakshi's proposed concept, the studio powers that be at Paramount apparently made it clear soon afterwards that they had very different ideas from Bakshi's with regard to what they wanted the movie to be. This resulted in a number of significant screenplay re-writes and revisions being carried out, none of which accorded with Bakshi's visions for it.

He had originally envisaged for Cool World a decidedly gritty, hard-hitting storyline, focusing upon a mixed-heritage child in the Cool World, with his mother a doodle and his father a noid. During a lengthy period incarcerated in prison, cartoonist noid Jack Deebs had created a series of Cool World comics containing a voluptuous female cartoon character named Debbie Dallas (a play on the title of the infamous 1978 pornographic movie Debbie Does Dallas), and with whom Jack had subsequently had sex after having been transported to the Cool World, resulting in the birth of their doodle/noid infant boy. When the success of his comics made him a star, however, Jack had abandoned doodle Debbie and their hybrid son, who grows up resenting his father so much that when finally an adult he decides to seek Jack out in the live-action world and murder him. Like I say, a much darker plot indeed from the one in the Cool World movie that finally hit the big screen in 1992!

Also, Bakshi wanted Brad Pitt to play Jack (he'd also considered Willem Dafoe), but the powers that be preferred a more established star (Brad was still a relative big-screen newcomer back in the late 1980s when Cool World was being conceived). So they selected Gabriel Byrne instead, resulting in Bakshi specifically creating the character of Frank for Brad to play instead, in order to have him in the movie after all. Bakshi also favoured Drew Barrymore for the role of Debbie (who'd be renamed Holli), but for the same reason as with Brad the studio selected Kim Basinger. And so, frame by frame, plot line by plot line, Cool World evolved and metamorphosed from Bakshi's raw R-rated original version into the toned-down PG13-rated released version.

Much as I love the latter movie, I cannot help but wonder what Bakshi's original Cool World concept would have been like had it been committed to celluloid. Judging from his various earlier mature-audience animated features like the afore-mentioned Fritz the Cat and Hey Good Lookin', both of which I also like very much, I think it highly likely that it would have been spectacular – as well as being a notable cinematic first as a live-action/animation mash-up horror movie. Alas, however, we'll never know, but what we do know is that Cool World currently does claim a notable yet poignant cinematic last – because more than 30 years after its release, this stunning movie remains the last big-screen feature-length film directed by Bakshi.

If you'd like to pay a visit to the Cool World via the movie version that was made, be sure to click here to watch an official Cool World trailer on YouTube and experience for yourself this nonetheless highly extravagant and thoroughly entertaining live-action/animation spectacle. Also, please click here to read my review of another Bakshi animated feature film, Fire and Ice.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Publicity poster for Cool World (© Ralph Bakshi/Bakshi Animation/Paramount Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)