Angel's Movie Review - Cool World
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Cool World(July 10, 1992)
Director: Ralph Bakshi Producers: Frank Mancuso, Jr.
Black Comedy, Romance, Action,
Key Words: Cartoons, Live Action, Parallel Worlds, Mature Content,
Studio: Paramount Pictures Licensed American Publisher: Paramount Pictures
Time: 102 minutes
In 1945, a World War II veteran, Frank Harris, returned to his mother with a beautiful motorcycle that he won in Italy during his tour. On a joyride with his mother, they were struck by a drunk driver and his mother dies on impact. As he was about to be taken away, Frank is teleported to the ‘Cool World’ by a scientist called Doc Whiskers. Frank stays in the world and becomes a cop, taking care of things.
On the other side of the spectrum, 47-year-old cartoonist Jack Deebs was detained after police found a murdered man was in bed with his wife. To pass time, he created a series of comic books called ‘Cool World’ which became a large hit. Soon, he is summoned to the Cool World itself by a woman a doodle named Holli Would who wishes to become a real woman. Unfortunately, Frank has other plans to stop Jack from doing so.
My Thoughts: 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.
Rating: 
Link to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_World
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May Also Like: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, MonkeyBone, Malice@Doll,
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