Cool World (1992)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Fantasy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	97:31
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (50:22)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ralph Bakshi
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Kim Basinger Gabriel Byrne Brad Pitt William Frankfather Greg Collins Janni Brenn Joey Camen Michael David Lally Michele Abrams Carrie Hamilton Stephen Worth Murray Podwal Jenine Jennings
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	Mark Isham John Dickson

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Arabic Bulgarian Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Italian Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Serbian Slovenian Spanish Swedish Turkish English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes, almost everyone smokes!
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

   A longer summary would go like this: In 1945, returned soldier Frank Harris (an early Brad Pitt) is sucked out of his home near Las Vegas and into a strange parallel world inhabited by living cartoons – Cool World. He becomes a police officer – as you do – and enforces the laws. Most important of these is that Noids (visiting humans) must not have sex with Doodles (cartoon people). This might not seem like a law many people would want to violate, until you consider the amount of Jessica Rabbit porn on the internet… Anyhoo. Cut to the Las Vegas of 1992, where one Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) is getting out of prison. Jack’s a cartoonist; his best known series is called Cool World; and he thinks that he invented it, until he starts getting pulled inside by oversexed Doodle Holli Would (Kim Basinger). Holli wants to be a star in the real world. She also kinda wants to break that rule I mentioned above. Jack is quickly under her spell, dire consequences ensue, and Frank must race desperately to protect both worlds from destruction.

   The movie itself is rather more baffling than that summary. The ‘rules’ of Cool World aren’t clearly explained – sometimes they aren’t even mentioned until they operate, which is very cheesy (“He’s dead! Oh no! But wait! I forgot that people killed in that particular way don’t die! Hooray!”). Scenes of essentially random cartoonishness are interspersed among those where something important is happening. The acting is often awkward, and not just when the performers are interacting with a blank space over which a cartoon will later be drawn. Brad Pitt still had a long way to go before he was good; Kim Basinger is a lot better as a voice-over than as a real woman; and Gabriel Byrne is thoroughly miscast as a troubled cartoonist.

   So what does this film have going for it? A terrific soundtrack – fully discussed below – and strong looks. Bakshi employs some neat camera moves and stylistic devices in the real world, but it’s in the Cool World that the real effort has been spent. The dark, twisted cityscapes look amazing, while the characters themselves evoke many different styles of animation. Some look like the anthropomorphic animals of the 20s and 30s, and some are escapees from the kind of work we used to see on Liquid Television. Holli Would herself is drawn and coloured like a bustier early Disney heroine – Snow White, say – and rotoscoped to produce wonderfully lifelike movement. Although adequate, interaction between actors and toons isn’t as sophisticated as in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, particularly when Brad Pitt puts his arm not-quite-around the neck of his Doodle girlfriend Lonette at 31:07. The sets where live actors and animated characters mix are much more impressive, built largely out of flat cutouts to create a hybrid 2-D/3D environment. If you’re at all interested in animation, Cool World is worth close study.

Video

   The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, slightly cropped from a theatrical ratio of 1.85:1, and is 16x9 enhanced.

   The image is pleasingly sharp and clear, with excellent shadow detail and rich, deep blacks.

   There are a lot of pretty colours in this movie, but there are also some annoying problems in rendering them. Wholly animated or wholly live action scenes are noticeably better in the brightness and saturation of their colours than scenes that mix live action with cartoons, where animation colours are drabber and more washed-out. This is no doubt due to the pre-digital technology behind the source material, rather than this transfer. Fine lines in the animation give rise to occasional areas of cross-colouration, as in the momentary cameo by Pinnochio and Gepetto at 49:13. There was also an instance of colour bleeding, on Lonette’s red, red lips at 39:11.

   There are a couple of instances of aliasing, primarily on the Zebra-patterned bar in Holli’s apartment, seen at 15:04 and 45:12. Telecine wobble is also a problem, one that is very evident during the opening credits and the first few scenes. The wobble is less overt for the rest of the film, but is still there. There are a few film artefacts – flecks and specks only – but the biggest worry here is just how grainy this film is. The grain affects every scene, but is doubly intense in those troublesome live/animated scenes. It won’t ruin your night, but it certainly detracts from the beauty of the image.

   The subtitles are plentiful, and the English ones are pretty accurate. While sometimes a little high up for my taste, they never get in the way.

   This is an RSDL disc, with the layer change poorly placed on a crucial shot of Holli at 50:22.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

   There are five audio tracks – one in English, presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448 Kbps, and French, German, Italian and Spanish tracks in Dolby Digital 2.0, at 192 Kbps.

   Dialogue is clear, easy to understand, and really shows off the abilities of the many experienced voice actors who contributed. Synchronisation is spot-on for live actors, and really pretty good for the toons.

   The music is one of Cool World’s best features. Mark Isham put together a startlingly groovy soundtrack filled with the best kind of late-80s and early-90s industrial and techno dance club music. Artists like My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult rub sonic shoulders with a young Moby, with a little bit of David Bowie and Ministry thrown in for good measure. The result is a real ‘sound’ for Cool World; it must have been pretty hip at the time, and it has aged very well. I’ve got to get the CD… The music adds a lot of energy and ambience to the onscreen action, and has been well mixed. The fronts carry most of it, but enough goes to the surrounds to provide an enveloping soundstage.

   The surrounds get quite a lot to do, in fact. This film was a stereo job on release, but has been thoroughly and competently remixed to take advantage of Dolby Digital 5.1. Ambient noise and musical support are constantly present in the surrounds, which are also well used in effects like a surround-to-front sound pan on a motorcycle at 5:47, people falling at 49:10, or an outburst of doodles into the real world at 84:34.

   The subwoofer was fairly active as well, although it only breaks out of a supporting role at 49:00 with a big LFE rumble. Otherwise, the sub provided great support to the action, and especially to the bass-heavy music.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Regrettably, there are no extras on this disc.

Menu

   The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

• German, Italian and Spanish soundtracks
• All subtitle streams except for English

   The video quality was sadly imperfect.

   The audio quality is superb.

   The extras were absent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall