Cool World (Cool World, 1992) is a film by Ralph Bakshi about an artist who draws comics while in prison and before being released discovers that the characters he drew exist in a fantasy world parallel to the real one. And there he wants to seduce the vamp girl he painted. The film combines cinema and animation, and it is always compared to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Critics immediately blew the Cool World to smithereens after the release, but now, after almost three decades, it can be considered a cult.
Attention! The review may contain spoilers revealing the content of the film.
Holly Wood's dance has become a meme today
During production, the film had quite a few problems, starting with the script. At first, Cool World was planned as a horror for an adult audience, but then Paramount decided to lower the age limit to PG-13. Bakshi began to rewrite the original script, but his version was not accepted. After the failure of the film, the animator vowed to have business with Hollywood. Actually, Hollywood is represented here by the main female character Holli Would, walking sex, whose main weapon is a perfect body. Today dancing Holly has become a meme, just search for the tag #holliwould on instagram.
Cool World as it is, surreal and gloomy
Bakshi said that this is not his film, but a Paramount film. And that he was only happy working on animation, because no one else understood it, and therefore did not stick a stick in the wheels. As for the actual filming, all his freedom was taken away from him: as a director of a feature film, no one listened to him. He could not manage the process at the casting stage and saw completely different actors in the main roles: Drew Barrymore and Brad Pitt.
Brad was originally supposed to play the role of artist Jack Dibs. In the role of Detective Frank Harris, sometimes he doesn’t look very convincing when he’s playing alone with a cartoon, but he does a great job at times when he needs to be angry or aggressive. His energetic insecurity adds to the chaos of the film.
"What's the matter, Nails? I'm busy."
Kim Besinger is not Tex Avery’s girlfriend at all. Kim is essentially nothing, her cartoon character is much cuter and sexier. One of the critics noted that Kim Besinger is just unpleasant here. Kim herself wanted to have a hand in the script and rewrite it so that she could travel with him to hospices and show sick children – Bakshi wrapped up this idea “Kim, you chose the wrong person for this,” although producer Frank Mancuso Jr. agreed with her.
The scene with Frank Sinatra Jr. was originally written by Ralph for a dirty Western bar. Instead of Why don't you do it right, here's Let's make love, but Kim couldn't get anywhere close to Jessica Rabbit's eroticism.
The creator of the fantastic world, Jack (Gabriel Byrne), is kind of weak-willed, he listens to Frank and just goes with the flow among the cartoon characters. It’s even hard to remember what happened to him at the end.
One of the main ideas of the film was the possibility of sex between a man (“vivacious”) and a cartoon. When it comes to that, they don’t show us anything at all, again, the 13+ rating doesn’t suggest anything like that. Holly wants to become a man – only in order to use her feminine nature to the fullest and sleep with all men.
"Keep your legs crossed!"
What is undoubtedly worth praising the film for is the soundtrack. The title song from David Bowie, for which he broke his creative silence, which lasted three years. The soundtrack is a collection of IDM, acid jazz and neo-swing, the latter consists of almost all background music by Mark Aisham. In addition to Bowie, Moby, Electronic, Future Sounds Of London, Ministry, etc. were noted in Cool World.
OST Cool World (1992)
2 Thompson Twins – Play with Me
3 Electronic feat. Neil Tennant – Disappointed
4 The Future Sound of London – Papua New Guinea
5 Ministry – N.W.O.
6 The Cult – The Witch
7 My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult – Sex on Wheelz (Glamour Dyke mix)
8 Moby – Ah-Ah (Mix 1)
9 Mindless – Mindless
10 Moby – Next Is the E (Long Arms Mix)
11 Da Juice – Do That Thang (Polite Mix)
12 My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult – Her Sassy Kiss
13 Pure – Greedy
14 Brian Eno – Under
15 Tom Bailey – Industry and Seduction
Download OST Cool World (1992) or listen online (mp3, 160 MB, 320 Kbps)
As I have already mentioned, the film has always been compared to Roger Rabbit, it was a kind of answer to Paramount Disney, and the general opinion was that the first film undoubtedly wins both in the successful combination of animation with cinema, and in the script, execution, etc. And that there is little humor here, they say there is only one funny joke in Cool World and that is below the belt.
Oh, brave new world of vice and gambling. Bakshi mocked a Disney bunny
Yes, all cartoon characters except Holly and Lonette have not been finalized. There are Nails and Sparks, who somehow pull on the roles of secondary, but if the beetle is still understandable in its functionality as an assistant to the chief law enforcement officer, then who is Sparks and what is his idea, except that he likes Holly, however, like all the male population, it is not clear. Yes, when Frank leads Doc Whiskas by the hand or puts his hand on the shoulder of a cartoon girlfriend, the discrepancy between the shot and the drawn is very striking. Yes, the implementation of the Cool World turned out to be uneven and sometimes incomprehensible. But the movie is still worth watching. Animation in the unique corporate style of self-taught Ralph Bakshi. Look, you won’t regret it.
