Author: Timothy Graton November 16, 2021, 12:00 AM

Let us pretend that I am telling you the movie I just watched. If I told you this is an animated/live-action film noir starring Brad Pitt. The background is a dark and dangerous world, basically "Cartoon City Meets Las Vegas Meets Hell" , You might take it for granted that this is a very cool photo. Unfortunately, once you really have time to see it in person, you will almost certainly be disappointed with the results. This is the case with "Cool World", one of the weirdest and wildest animated films of the 90s.

"Cool World" is a movie that has a complicated relationship with me. This is an obviously flawed film that retains the disruptive continuity of its creator, but drowns out his iconic voice and the social commentary that is essential to his best film, and the experience of making it makes it Creators are always bored when working with Hollywood-despite the above-mentioned flaws, it is a soft spot that I happen to have in particular.

To understand the cool world, you must first be familiar with a name: Ralph Bakshi. Bakshi is a pioneer in the field of animation, and almost single-handedly created an animation concept that is strictly for adults. If it weren't for the disruptive work done by Bakshi, we might not have movies like The Simpsons, South Park, Rick and Morty, or any animations that are strictly for adults.

His first film, Fritz Cat, was the first X-rated animated film, just because there was no concept of adult animation at the time, and it is still the most successful independent animated feature film ever. He went on to produce several more groundbreaking adult animations, including "Busy Traffic", "American Pop" and "Raccoon". His HBO series "The Spicy City" was the first "adult-only" animated series, which was released more than a month before its premiere in South Park-things like liquid TV had existed before, but it was not clear Marketing to adults. Cool World is the last feature film made by Bakshi, and his experience played an important role in his decision to exit the animation industry.

Cool World is a work that seemed doomed to fail from the beginning. Bakshi initially positioned this movie as an R-rated horror movie. It is a mixture of real-life and animation. It surrounds an underground cartoonist who continues to give birth to a half-human, half-cartoon child who continues to chase his father in the real world. Face and kill him. Paramount Pictures accepted this idea, but the producer Frank Mancuso Jr. decided that instead of pursuing the difficult R, the film should target the PG rating to try to rely on who framed the success of Roger Rabbit. As Bakshi said, he received a new script on the first day of production, which caused him to have a physical conflict with Mancuso-if he does not finish the film, he is also subject to possible lawsuits by Paramount Threat.

Things will only become more difficult from there. Bakshi initially asked Brad Pitt to play Jack Dibbs and Drew Barrymore as Holly, but the studio rejected him, instead letting Pete play Frank Harris and Kim Basinger as Holly. Because she has greater potential box office appeal, Gabriel Byrne (Gabriel Byrne) as Dibbs. According to Bakshi, Basinger herself tried to rewrite the film during the production process because she "thought it would be great if she could show this picture to sick children in the hospital [...] I said,' Kim, I think this is great, but you have found the wrong person.'"

After all the difficulties and conflicts in the entire production process, it’s no surprise that Bakshi mainly calls in the movie; in his own words: "...I think maybe I can make the animation of these things become Interesting, I did it.” His animator never received the script, but was told to “make an interesting scene no matter what [they] want to do”, which resulted in a lack of focus in the film as a whole.

The first major problem with Cool World is that, despite its interesting premise, the actual plot lengthened by an hour and a half of running time is very small. Things often turn into random tangents, and when the plot reappears, it usually introduces new elements that were not established or implied before. Holly initially only wanted to be a human being and live in the human world, but when we entered the climax of the movie, her plan seemed to be to release the residents of the cool world into the human world with her. It doesn’t even really explain how to turn graffiti into humans, or how people enter the cool world-at first, there is a MacGuffin called "Energy Spike" that seems to be the core of moving between worlds, but this is only when the plot requires it. Will be remembered. There are many that are not really explained in any meaningful way. The worst part is that after Holly finally did something with Dibbs and became human, we followed her and Dibbs into the real world, which means that most of the second half of the movie stays in the real world Las Vegas Gass's relatively dull environment.

The performance was mixed: Brad Pitt named it Harris, bringing serious intensity to the role; Kim Basinger was as exquisite as Holli—until she became a human, when it became the standard "reading cue card" Basinger During the performance; Gabriel Byrne... There, there is no real problem with his performance, but there is no performance at all, he is just there to provide Holly with the means of ending.

Secondly, this film has an obvious technical problem that shouldn't exist in a film of this nature, especially under the $28 million budget: the synthesis between animation and real people is not convincing at all. It took four full years in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" to make cartoon characters truly feel physical space when interacting with real actors and objects, which is particularly shocking. Throughout the process, you will also notice some other details-for example, in the scene where we first introduced Holli, you can see the character being rendered when we pan to the place where she dances-but even so The thing is not as bad as there is an immersive destructive flaw in the main attraction of your movie.

Although this movie has many problems, I watched it over and over again. Despite its flaws, there are still many things to like.

Visually, this is one of the most jaw-dropping and beautiful movies you have ever seen. Cool World itself is an exquisite surreal psychedelic cross between Cartoon Vegas and Cartoon Hell. The buildings twist and rotate as they reach the sky, many of them with open, disturbing, carefully drawn human mouths. The roads are built with supports to bring them closer to the roller coaster track. The fancy neon lights are constantly shining with the temptation for any fun you want. This movie also often uses real-life scenes, which look like living, shuttle-like paintings, which Bakshi has always wanted to achieve for a long time. The character animation works well, evoking several eras of classic animation, such as the early Fleischer madness or Chuck Jones madness. Holli is a particularly outstanding character. She is an equally attractive and mildly insanity Jessica-Rabbit-for-growups type, with a lively and rough personality.

At the same time, the feeling of the movie world is a puzzling insanity and vice: the crazy dark version of ToonTown is full of run-down alleys and almost uninterrupted cartoon violence and chaos. Even in exposition scenes, chaotic animation sequences often appear randomly in the foreground. The character in question doesn't even recognize them, leading to the feeling that this is the world's thing.

Even if the film lacks plot and focus, it will eventually lead to this general insanity. One can imagine a Cool World series, which is just following Harris trying to maintain some sense of peace in this dirty, chaotic underworld, and he is facing any new madness that day.

The soundtrack and music of this movie are killer features. The soundtrack is a jazz mix of big band tunes, while the soundtrack is veritable 90s electronic dance music and dance music, including an original song by David Bowie, which was actually his first solo material in about three years. It is of course built for a specific time, but its soundtrack is very suitable for the obscure, psychedelic madness of the film’s emotional core.

So what is the cool world? Interestingly, the film itself is finally close to Bakshi's original positioning: a semi-cartoon, semi-live-action film, about a quarter of Bakshi and 75% of Mancuso and Basinger's rewriting and reorganization. This is a movie filmed by three different political parties trying to move in different directions, which makes it not attractive enough for any audience they try to attract. Designer Milton Knight pointed out that perhaps the premiere audience who defended Bakshi and watched the film with him was one of the many who wanted a wilder, more crude and cool world that was more in line with Bakshi's original vision.

From the beginning, Bakshi's feature films have had two trademarks: social commentary and subversion. Bakshi was able to establish an alternative to mainstream animation by adopting the media aimed at children at the time and using it to tell more satirical or dramatic stories, the themes of which were considered taboo at the time. The protagonist Fritz dropped out of college as he pleased, accidentally caused racial riots before becoming a left-wing revolutionary, satirized the free love movement, and criticized dishonest political radicalism and countercultural movements. Late 1960s. Coonskin brought traditional characters such as Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er Bear to the top of organized crime gangs in Harlem, combining the stereotyped designs of African Americans with more negative descriptions of white people. Set racists as a means of attacking racial stereotypes by directly portraying them. Even the first movie in the fantasy era of Bakshi, "The Witcher", also tells the battle between two wizards on the post-apocalyptic earth. One represents magical power and the other represents technical power. Evil wizards use projectors and Nazis. Propaganda enhanced by magic, used in psychological warfare.

This subversive continuity still manages to show itself in the cool world. Likewise, the nominal setting is a twisted version of ToonTown for adults-or as close as possible, while still maintaining the PG-13 rating. We see characters gambling, making love, drinking, and-in a particularly memorable scene-urinating in a car full of police officers. Despite the best efforts of Mancuso and Basinger, this is not an animated movie that parents will take their young or even adolescent children to watch. 

On the other hand, there was almost no voice from Bucksey. Any sense of social comment that may have existed in the early drafts disappeared completely in the rewriting, replaced by a teenage comedy, which was designed to try to capture the audience who framed Roger Rabbit, who had always been with the gritty gritty that Bucksh was trying to present. The adult world is out of picture. The result is that this movie is at best a downplayed version of what Bakshi aims to achieve in the media, and you can't really blame him for leaving Hollywood behind after the result of this movie. 

However, it is still a movie to enjoy-if you happen to belong to either of two different groups. The first is the Ralph Bakshi completionists, these people (like me) spend too much time in the dark corners of the Internet trying to track down the old Mighty Mouse episodes or decent rips of Spicy City. The second group is a little more abstract and can best be described as a loose group of "adult animation enthusiasts" who (again like me) think that things like rock and rules are definitely masterpieces. Therefore, although "Cool World" is still the closest and dear movie in my mind-if you find this movie is your jam, it can be a powerful way to enter the classics of real animation dreamers.

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