williamspencer-29395 If you don't know anything about this, Ralph Bakshi wrote a script that was supposed to be a hard-R rated horror film that mixed animation and live action about a half-toon/half-human monstrosity that goes on a murderous rampage. However, when he came to the set first day of filming, he found that producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. had the script secretly rewritten behind his back to become some "fish out of water" crap that was watered down to PG-13 and forced him to use this script. The script has nothing that connects, nothing is motivated. Things just happen randomly. Often we'll suddenly follow unfamiliar cartoon characters we haven't seen before or since while they do any random thing Bakshi could think of that the producer would let him do. The world building makes no sense. Brad Pitt, playing a WW2 veteran, accidentally kills his mother in a motorcycle accident, and is suddenly brought into the cartoon world for almost no reason. Then, we meet the main character in prison 50 years later drawing that world. But how could the world exist if he hasn't created it yet? Not only that, at one point, they mention the main character killed someone, and no one ever mentions it again. At the end, he suddenly turns into a cartoon superhero out of nowhere. Pitt dies, but that suddenly means that he turns into a cartoon as well. Not even the animation's good. Most of the cartoons lack shading, so they never blend in, and they don't match any of the live action materials or lighting. Often, crappy animation will suddenly play out in the middle of a scene in an attempt to make drawn out scenes feel like something's happening. Needless to say, Bakshi proceeded to punch Frank Mancuso, Jr. in the face. Honestly, the fact that he didn't kill him for using a script like this is charity. It didn't make things any better when Kim Basinger decided that she wanted this to be the kind of movie she could show children she visited in hospitals, and forced them to tone down things even more. Bare in mind, this is a movie where she grinds her ass right against Frank Sinatra, Jr's genitals and becomes human after having sex with Gabriel Byrne. Bakshi's never directed any theatrical film since, and has only done a couple of animated shorts and a live-action Jared Leto-led TV movie. I don't blame him. Apparently he's trying to get another project done, even though as of writing he's 79. Good for him. Meanwhile, Mancuso later produced "I Know Who Killed Me" and won a Razzie for worst picture. Currently he's set to produce Bill and Ted 3. God help us.

Eric Stevenson The funny thing is that this movie was already reviewed by MarzGurl (and Linkara) and Doug Walker originally thought he wouldn't review it as the Nostalgia Critic, but he eventually changed his mind. Good thing, because the real Ralph Bakshi actually commented on this review. It was great to learn more about the film's history. This movie started off as an R-rated movie about a person who's half human and half cartoon and turns evil realizing they don't belong in the human or cartoon world. Instead, Bakshi's script was heavily changed into basically a ripoff of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". It's hard to see how the original idea would be worse than this.I guess that some of the animation is pretty good, but this film is so hard to follow. We even have these random animated scenes that are just splattered throughout the film and make no sense. As much as they have stuff going on all the time, it's actually surprisingly boring for me. It's just that most of the time none of these scenes are relevant to the story and it's mostly pointless. There's very little explanation on this cartoon world works at all. There's even a part where Brad Pitt doesn't want to be a hero but later it's Jack who's supposed to be a hero. Uh, I just couldn't follow this at all and I found it stupid. *1/2

Angels_Review This, like 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', has a mixture of live action and cartoons. Unlike Roger Rabbit, this is clearly not a show for children. The story line pretty much brings a man from our world, a convict actually who draws a cartoon comic book called "Cool World." In his loneliness, he created a rather interesting stripper girl who gets a life of her own kind of. Women are highly sexualized and some of the animations are really scandalized. Think Jessica Rabbit to the extreme although she is pretty much of a badass. I like how they created her as a girl that will take what she wants without any problems.I actually couldn't get into the show. It's pretty much stylized for the time it came out without really anything that would probably relate to this time. It was OK if you like this type of thing and did talk about love breaking boundaries but otherwise, it really didn't have much of a reason for being besides a trip down sexual cartoons.The animations are out side the box, going between good and really bad. It's pretty equal to the acting actually. Lots of characters are off and full of profanity. Everything is flat when it comes to the cartoon world, but it would be so much better if it was more like toon world from Roger Rabbit and just drew it all in. It would have felt so much more consistent if it was. The only character that was drawn rather well was Holli and Frank's girlfriend Lanet, the stripper girl. I did like the dark look and feel of the surreal cartoon world. Threwout the whole show, they never once actually showed the naked female figure although they hinted at it and showed what they called 'mating' (pretty much they have sex).When they get to a point where Animated characters interact with the real world characters, things get really choppy. When a real world character picks something up, many times, the hand seems to glide on the object and they can't really touch the animated characters without making it look like they are all in the characters head. I wish they would at least use a green screen for those parts. You can tell the animation was done after they filmed the live action stuff and it looks pretty much like crap in those areas talking in today's standard. I don't know enough to say if it was in their time as well.The voices could be so much better then this. I have seen much better stuff voices for this date and time. Now I am mostly talking about the animated characters.

TheLittleSongbird I had heard that this film was messy and awful and everything, but as I am a huge animation fan I was thinking maybe I should give it a chance, maybe it wouldn't be that bad. Cool World wasn't absolutely awful, it had its saving graces, but there is a lot wrong as well that makes it a major disappointment. This has been compared to other live-action films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, I'll keep the comparison brief; Cool World isn't as fun, innovative or as original as WFRR, and I will admit I wasn't expecting it to be.PROS: The animation is not bad at all. The backgrounds look like paintings, the characters are drawn reasonably well and the colours are beautiful. The soundtrack is pretty good too, the score is wonderful and the songs are fun and suitably upbeat. I like the character of Holli Would, she is sensual and sexy, yet she is very selfish and cruel, that makes her intriguing. Personally I thought Kim Bassinger did a decent job playing her. Plus the live action sequences were well shot.CONS: Whereas the animation sequences and the live action sequences are fine individually, merged together they don't quite gel, in fact they are quite jarring-the live action considerably duller than the animation and the human characters are incredibly stiff. While I was fine with Kim Bassinger, the other acting is not great at all I feel. Gabriel Byrne is given little to do and struggles, while Brad Pitt(who has actually given some good performances in some good films, ie. Se7en) speaks in a constant monotonic drawl to the point he's boring. The script is very unfocused, derivative and confused, and the story is incomplete and meanders all over the place. Complete with very pedestrian pacing, badly underdeveloped characters and a WTF? ending, and you have a pretty disappointing film overall.All in all, has its moments, but out of the Ralph Bakshi films I've seen, this is my least favourite, a film that had promise but failed to deliver. 4/10 Bethany Cox