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Cool World

Cool World

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $13.49
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: ADULT ANIMATION, NOT FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
Review: The dvd has Great Quality Sound and Video with lots of vivid colors and many sexual inuendos. There is a Great story line as long as you can follow a plot that suggests that there is more to life than just living on "earth" such as going back and forth to alternate universes. If you have seen and liked "MEET THE FEEBLES" You'll like this one too - this one does not have any bloody scenes or explicit sexual scenes, much is left up to the imagination. I think that Many people need to Learn to use their imagination more and not be so closed-minded.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Bakshi's worst movie
Review: The movie is poorly written not to mention the lame special effects. Its a completly souless film. If you liked Fritz the Cat,Wizards,American Pop, or other films by Ralph Bakshi, than stay away from this, because its embarassing.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Underrated Cult Classic.
Review: This film has been called Roger Rabbit's sleazier cousin...with good reason. Yes, the plot is contrived. Yes, the acting flatter than the animation. But this movie is ... entertaining!

Cool World begins in Las Vegas shortly after WWII. A young man is in a motorcycle accident, and is unwittingly sucked into the "Cool World", a hip dimension populated by cartoons. Unable to return, he becomes a Cool World Police Officer, and is the only human there. Years later, a dopey, lovesick comic book artist also is pulled into Cool World by none other than Miss Holli Would...a vampy animated seductress who wants to enter the "Real World" at any cost...

Cool World is a film with a very unique animation style that brings to mind classic 40's cartoons like Betty Boop or Red Hot Riding Hood, only they're given a sexier edge. The characters are also what makes Cool World cool. Harris, Jack, and especially Lonnette are surprisingly three-dimensional and likable. The soundtrack is also excellent, a features a catchy theme song by David Bowie. Sadly, the film could have been much better. It's full of missed opportunities (such as the Jack-in-prison subplot) and the script needed a *lot* more polishing. Also, the blending of animation and live-action is far from seamless. Cool World will make you laugh and entertain you, in a very MST3K sense, but it's still worth watching. And I want Cool World on DVD!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: FABULOUS! A MUST-SEE FOR CARTOON FANS!
Review: This is a wonderful movie and a definate must-see for cartoon fans. Cute, but in a much more adult way than Roger Rabbit, Cool World is an odd but appealing and fun look into the separate worlds of humans and cartoons.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fun to Watch
Review: This is not the best movie ever made, but if you have nothing to do, should definately watch.It has great animation, and for those Brad pitt fans, he comes out extremely hot.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This film is an Abomination
Review: This might be the worst film ever made. The only 'cool' part was when I left the theater. Everyone who's fingerprints are on this train wreck should be in prison. Everyone who had the misfortune of seeing it should be given a refund and free movie passes for life.

What's wrong with it:

The script seemed so ham fisted it must have been penned by a fith grade victim of child abuse.

The animation, that looked good in the trailer/commercials, was only adequate.

What was right with it:

Nothing.

Overall this whole movie failed to entertain on any level.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: "Roger Rabbit" on bad crack
Review: This movie isn't just bad, it's a mish-mash of incoherent drivel that fails to entertain on all levels. The animation is adequate, but the plot is chaotic, and most of the characters are one-dimensional. The premise, of an evil cartoon woman drawing her creator into her cartoon world in order to seduce him into helping her become human, may have worked had the writers bothered to pay attention to anything beyond the bizzare juvenile fantasies of men having sex with vulptous cartoon women a la Jessica Rabbit. Not everything is terrible-- Brad Pitt's romance with the cartoon woman is a little spot of calm in the midst of this otherwise terrible film-- but it is poorly developed and drowns in the rest of the nonsense. What one recalls from the film other than this are the few "radical" images, such as Holly having sex with her creator, and everything else dissolves into the nonsensical, often madcap idiocy that characterizes the rest of the film. Unless you're so fascinated by the premise that you can't help yourself, stay away.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Holli Would if she could -- but should you?
Review: To watch or not to watch?
That is the question.
The back of my brain suffered the slings and arrows of a thousand bad reviews for Cool World, animator/director Ralph Bakshi's last Hollywood movie, which is also considered to be his worst.
I decided to watch it anyway, because, even Bakshi's worst is a lot better than the typical Hollywood films made today.

And the cast certainly looks impressive: Gabriel Bryne, Kim Basinger ... hey, Brad Pitt in one of his earliest major film roles.
Maybe this isn't so bad.
Or is it?

PLOT SUMMARY:
Cool World starts off in Las Vegas, 1944.
Frank Harris is a soldier returning from World War II.
After getting into a motorcycle accident, he is thrown into the Cool World, a world of cartoons.
This is the result of experimenting by a scientist who is attempting to put himself in the real world.
Flash-forward to 1992.
Jack Deebs is a cartoonist who has just returned from prison after serving time for killing his wife after she slept with another man.
Deebs is the creator of "Cool World," an interpretation of his visions of the Cool World.
He doesn't know that the Cool World is real until he is thrown smack dab in the middle of it.
Upon arriving in Cool World, he meets Holli Would, who is trying to become a real person by having sex with a human.
But the law in Cool World is that doodles (cartoons) can't have sex with 'noids (humans), because this could destroy both worlds.

THE GOOD:
The animation is quite impressive, even though it looks nothing like the animation in Ralph Bakshi's earlier films.
The acting is very good, and the direction is excellent.
The shots of the city of Las Vegas are great.

THE BAD:
Though entertaining for what it is, Cool World is missing the Bakshi touch.
It's a PG-13 film, which means that there is no nudity and barely any sex (and what little sex that IS in the film is "politically correct" and very 90s, very PG-13), an uncomfortable change from Bakshi's early, X-rated cartoon films like Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic.

Bakshi's trademark of heavy amounts of dialogue is missing here.
Most of the dialogue of "Cool World" is connected towards the plot, and what doesn't have anything to do with the plot is flat and poorly written -- another huge departure from Bakshi's earlier films.
Fritz the Cat, for instance had a bar scene featuring discussions on the race issue between multiple sets of crows.
It's original, it's unique, and it's very funny.
No dialogue of its kind is to be found in Cool World.

THE UGLY:
Many critics complained that Bakshi was just trying to cash in on Roger Rabbit's fame with this one, which is incorrect.
What Robert Zmeckis did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was nothing special.

A live action film with animated characters? Been there, done that.
MGM used this gimmick with Anchors Aweigh, in a scene in which Gene Kelly danced with Jerry the mouse (of "Tom & Jerry" fame).
Disney did it with Song of the South, Mary Poppins, and other films.
Even Bakshi did it way before Zmeckis -- in 1975's Coonskin.

So, how did Bakshi try to cash in on Roger Rabbit's fame with Cool World again?
The film looks VERY 90'S, which is not a good look for a Ralph Bakshi film.
Even Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had shadings and colors to make it look like a 1940s murder mystery.

Reportably, Bakshi wrote the original screenplay to Cool World, which, in his version, was about a man who has sex with a cartoon and they have a half-human/half-cartoon child who tries to kill him.
This story sounds much more entertaining than what producer Frrank Mancuso, Jr., and screenwriters Michael Grais and Mark Victor turned Cool World into.
The result was poorly conceived and executed.

This film is worth taking a look at, though, because the animation is good, Bakshi's direction is good, and the acting is good, even if the script isn't.
As for the combination of live-action and animation, Ralph Bakshi used this technique years earlier, and much more successfully in 1975's Coonskin (which was re-released on VHS under the title "Streetfight," with a caption above the new title that advertised the film as being "From the director of Cool World!"), an R-rated spoof of the the "blaxploitation" genre delivered in the format of Song of the South, and in the 1985 Rolling Stones music video The Harlem Shuffle.

Bakshi had planned to begin work on a sequel to his 1977 fantasy Wizards after Cool World wrapped, but 20th Century Fox backed out of the deal after Cool World flopped at the box office, which is a shame, though.
A sequel to Wizards would have been cool.

DVD DETAILS:
Region 1
Keep Case
Anamorphic Widescreen
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
Dolby Surround - English
Dolby Surround - French
Interactive Features:
Scene Access
Interactive Features

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Let Holli Be Holli - And Me Be Me
Review: Well, the reviews certainly run the gamut with this one! I personally very much enjoy seeing this film, and continue to do so, whenever it comes on cable. It's not on my top-ten list of DVDs to get, but I'll certainly put it on my "Wish List." I'm not saying so much that this is a "truly great film," nor am I agreeing with the "complete waste of time," crowd, either. I just find it interesting at how quickly people make their declarations and seem to expect that everyone who disagrees with them are some kind of lower form of life, and if you don't want to be like *that*, then you'd better agree with them, post haste. I happen to have a pretty loose sense of humor, and am a bit of a letch (come on - who really isn't - deep down), and so this type of material appeals to me. If you're more the conservative, Christian Coalation, family values, Disney-type, then we can expect more severe opinions from you with regard to this movie, and that's okay, too. I'll make you a deal: I won't force you to watch it, if you don't try to prevent me from liking it. How's that?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent but underated based on some reviews on this page.
Review: What makes this film brilliant is the attention to bizarre details and all of the activity going on in the background which is not part of the main story. Anyone who can compare this film unfavourably with Roger Rabbit should get their eyes and brains checked for tunnel vision.


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