Almost 10 years after Fire and Ice, Ralph Bakshi came back from semi-retirement to direct his 9th and to date last feature animation: Cool World.
Cool World tells the story of WWII vet Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) who, after accidentally having caused his mother's death in a motorbike crash, somehow finds himself in the eponymous World, a cartoon fantasyland where he is now a flatfoot defending law and order, which in toonland means inter alia that toons (here called doodles) are never to mate with humans (here called 'noids) there unfortunately ensuing that not only Frank's love affair with doodle singer Lonette shall remain unfulfilled but also that he has to spend an inordinate amount of time resisting the advances of Holly Would (voiced and impersonated in 'noid version by Kim Basinger) who craves mating with a 'noid to become a 'noid herself. Luckily for Holly, into the Cool World comes ex-con and cartoon designer Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) much less chaste and much more deluded than Frank, thereby Holly getting her way with potentially apocalyptic consequences, since, as everyone knows, once a doodle consummates the unspeakable act with a 'noid, she or he will be turned to a 'noid but will nevertheless be subject to occasional fits of doodleness and vice-versa, thus compromising the cosmic balance of the four-dimensional universe or something. Fortunately (spoiler alert) all ends well and eventually Frank goes doodle and lives happily ever after with Lonette.
Cool World is a slicker production than usual in Bakshi's work, an apt Faustian and Pinocchian pinnacle to Bakshi's animation/live-action universe, with a relatively tight plot and little cartoon indulgence, save for frequent doodle spectres and minions cavorting about, commenting on the action or distracting from it, in what otherwise appears to be an attempt to underline, as if underlining was necessary, the doodleness of the proceedings.
If it can be said that most of Bakshi's previous feature output, whatever other merits or demerits it had, was ahead of its time, Cool World comes uncharacteristically and derivatively behind the curve, the path to real world/fantasy world transmigration and people/toon cohabitation having been already blazed by Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1985) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988), respectively. Nonetheless, Cool World is an appropriate final act for Ralph Bakshi's feature animation, evincing both its potential and its limitations emblematically and entertainingly.