Cool World is what would happen if Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Heavy Metal procreated. I’m 100% convinced its target audience was middle school-aged boys during a time period where porn was physically printed media and not a 2-second google search away. It tries so hard to be edgy and instead succeeds in being the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever seen.

Do you want to know what it’d look like for a real life human to “make it” with a cartoon? No? What if the human was the nerdy German professor from Little Women and the cartoon was Kim Basinger? Well, the director of Cool World, Ralph Bakshi certainly did and now we’re all worse off.

Nothing could have prepared me for the plot of this movie. Riffing on Bakshi’s original concept, the writing pair that also gave us Starsky and Hutch and 2 Poltergeist movies posits “What if a separate animated world called Toontown Cool World existed? And in that world a down-on-his-luck human detective played by Bob Hoskins Brad Pitt and his cartoon sidekick called Roger Rabbit Nails investigated the extracurricular activities of a sultry singing bombshell named Jessica Rabbit Holli Would? And what if a toon Doodle tried to impersonate a human Noid for their own personal gain disregarding how it affected the citizens of their own town? Like, what if someone told that story?!”

See, Brad Pitt’s character Frank Harris is a WW2 vet who returns to Las Vegas to be with his mother after the war. During a motorcycle ride they get hit by a drunk driver, and Frank’s mom immediately dies. Simultaneously, some cartoon scientist opens a rift between Cool World and Real World using some “spike” he invented, witnesses Frank’s emotional break that somehow interferes with the spike and facilitates his transportation into Cool World.

How did this cartoon scientist rip a hole into reality? How did Frank navigate between the real world and Cool World by being really, really upset? I dunno, fuck you for asking.

Instead of being like hm, clearly this is a psychotic break, I should try to get back to reality, Frank spends the next 47 years of his life in Cool World, somehow nagging a job as its only detective. What’s he trying to prevent from happening? Holli, a Doodle played by Kim Basinger, fucking a Noid.

Since our chaste friend Frank won’t give up the goods, Holli targets Jack Deebs, a cartoonist she inspired to write the “Cool World” comic series because of her frequent visits in his dreams. Jack is currently serving time in jail for murdering his wife’s lover, but somehow has an entire art studio in his cell and Holli scribbled on his walls. He’s going to be released in a few days, and he moans out a thanks to Holli for helping him through his time incarcerated. I don’t for a second want to picture Gabriel Byrne jackin’ it to a picture he drew of a blonde chick, but here we are.

How has Holli been communicating with Jack? Did she reach out to him first, or did he somehow slip into Cool World by accident? How did Holli pull him into Cool World? Is the “spike” facilitating this interaction somehow? I dunno, fuck you for asking.

Frank catches wind of this new development and hunts down Jack to have a little chat about The Rules. The sexual tension between the two factions is incredibly awkward, but my favorite line in the whole movie is the intimidating way Brad Pitt spits at Gabriel Byrne, “Noids do not have sex with Doodles“.

“Keep your PENCIL in your POCKET if you know what I mean.”

Someone had to write this. Someone had to print this in a script, give it to a director, have them sign off on it, deliver it to two well-known actors, block it, rehearse it, and then tell Brad Pitt, hot off of Thelma & Louise fame, to deliver this so fucking earnestly that we would believe if Gabriel Byrne stuck his dick in a cartoon the world would explode. And then Brad repeats the rule the same way Tyler reiterates to new members not to talk about Fight Club.

The missed opportunity of Frank not warning Jack with, “Don’t diddle a Doodle” breaks my heart if I think about it more than 2 seconds.

So what does Jack do after this encounter? Fuck Holli.

Now Frank can fuck his Doodle girlfriend that I completely forgot to mention he has guilt-free. The end.

The marketing for this film was bananas. Paramount partnered with DC to release a prequel comic book series and set the stage for the story. They donated money to the parks department to promote the movie by plastering a cutout of Holli on the Hollywood sign, which outraged people exactly as much as you think it would. They also worked with David fucking Bowie to record a song for the soundtrack.

How, as a child of the 80s/90s and teenage fan of Brad Pitt, did I not once encounter Cool World before it randomly appeared as a free movie on YouTube?! Maybe because this had an estimated budget of 30 Million dollars and only grossed shy of half that. The plot is convoluted, the interactions between live action footage and animation never look natural, and the performance of every single one of these decent actors is terrible somehow. Kim Basinger is more of a cartoon character in the live action footage than she is animated, which is a shame because she’s absolutely capable of being funny while being seductive. Cool World only solidified my #teamlaurie allegiance cause I can never look Gabriel Byrne in the eyes again. And how did Brad Pitt get cast as a detective in Se7en after his creative accent choices in this?!