Cool World (PG-13)
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This came out in 1992, presumably because the success of another live-action/animation hybrid movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But unlike that movie, this one was a critical and financial bomb, and deservedly so. I'm not sure when I first saw it... I feel like it might have been sometime in the late 90s, on VHS or TV or whatever, but I'm not sure I did. I know I had it on DVD at some later point in time, in like the mid-2000s, maybe. But at the time, I guess I chose not to write a review, because it was so bad. And I didn't keep the DVD. But over the years, I eventually started thinking I did want to write a review, after all. So I finally got it on Blu-ray, and watched it in 2024. And I didn't dislike it as much as I remembered, but it's still one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. Which makes sense, considering it was directed by Ralph Bakshi. And I'd still say it's a bad movie. But it's... worth watching, as a curiosity. Maybe.

It starts in 1945, with a soldier named Frank Harris (Brad Pitt), returning home from World War II. He takes his mother for a ride on a motorcycle (and I was a bit worried that she had been cooking and there's no indication that she ever turned off the stove), and they get into an accident, and his mom dies. Then Frank gets pulled into a cartoon reality called Cool World, where he meets a cartoon scientist called Doc Whiskers (voiced by Maurice LaMarche). At this point I should mention that cartoon characters are called "doodles" and live-action humans are called "noids".

The story then flashes forward to 1992, when a cartoonist named Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne), who is in prison, gets inexplicably sucked into Cool World, himself, where he meets a doodle named Holli Would (Kim Basinger). Jack had created a comic book series called "Cool World", based on recurring visions he's had over the years, so he thinks Holli and the whole reality she lives in are his creations. But actually, Cool World had existed long before his visions started. Anyway, he soon returns to the "real" world, and as his sentence is up, he's released from prison. He goes home, and once again gets sucked into Cool World, where Frank is now a police detective (and hasn't aged at all since 1945). Frank warns Jack that the number one law in Cool World is that doodles can't have sex with noids. Meanwhile, Frank himself is dating a doodle named Lonette (Candi Milo), but the two of them never have sex, which is frustrating for both of them. Anyway, Holli eventually seduces Jack, and after they have sex, she turns into a noid, and the two of them go to the real world. When Frank finds out about it, he follows them there, intent on bringing Holli back to Cool World.

And... a ton of other stuff happens that I don't want to spoil. I should probably mention a few other characters. There's a gang of doodle goons who apparently work for Holli. There's Frank's doodle partner, Nails (Charlie Adler). There are a couple of noid neighbors (a young woman named Jennifer and her mother, Isabelle) who check in on Jack because of weirdness going on with his house, and Jennifer later gets caught up in the chase for Holli. There's a doodle gangster named Sparks, who I think is interested in Holli. And the end of the movie is even crazier than the rest of the movie, which is saying a lot. I think the writers just had no idea how to end it. Anyway... the animation doesn't blend seamlessly with the live-action characters, but then again, there seemed to me to be at least three layers of animation, which didn't really blend together well, either. There's the backgrounds, and the main characters (both doodles and noids), and then there are all sorts of random doodles engaging in all sorts of random, wacky cartoon antics that bear no relation to the plot. Also some of the doodles appear to be ghosts or something, so that might represent a fourth layer of animation. I should also say the only doodles who really look human are Holli and Lonette (and they're both pretty hot, though they can't hold a candle to Jessica Rabbit). And really, nothing in the movie makes any sense. The acting is pretty stiff. And I'm not really sure what else to say. It's all just utterly bizarre, but I've started to feel like it's possible to appreciate the movie for its weirdness. (Which is something I sometimes have no trouble doing with other movies or shows or whatever. But with this, it's rather challenging to do so.)