Ralph Bakshi came back again from semi-retirement in 1994 to direct is first and only live action feature film, and his last to date: Cool and the Crazy.
Cool and the Crazy tells the story of 50s high school sweethearts Rosy and Michael's marriage (90´s heartthrobs Alicia Silverstone and Jared Leto, whose careers subsequently failed to live up to initial expectations) the 7 year itch sinking in in less than 2, complete with toddler on board and extramarital affairs by both parties, ensuing conflict, resentment, bitterness and pain ending (spoiler alert) the American way, as Michael decides to hit the road.
Cool and the Crazy possibly took its otherwise incongruous title from The Cool and the Crazy (William Witney, 1958) a B filler about the dangers of reefer abuse which, like the effort under review, was produced by American International Pictures – in case you don't know, a low-budget independent studio fronted by Pope of Pop Cinema Roger Corman, who inter alia played no small part in launching the careers of Martin Scorsese and FF Coppola, among many others, back in the day. Not unlike Bakshi, AIP came back from Tinseltown hibernation (the company was formally disbanded in 1980) to produce Rebel Highway, a series of 10 TV feature films inspired in 50s B movies “with a 90's twist”, of which Cool and the Crazy was the 9th instalment - the remaining 9 being the object of the next MacMahonian series, more on which soon.
Back to Cool and the Crazy. 90´s twist maybe, 50s B movie you coulda fooled me. While there's absolutely no trace of Bakshi's style or usual themes, except perhaps a general fascination with 50s pop culture – coincidentally or not the era of Bakshi's youth, but also the subject matter of the series under commission, not to mention a general obsession afflicting many, for the better part of 50 years and counting – the relatively underproduced look of the film feels unconvincing at a time when period piece production prided itself in accurate detail and “realism”. Interestingly, and unlike, say, Frank Tashlin, Bakshi's cartoon style doesn't try to crossover to live action in the least, and his direction is – appropriately, one might argue, for a TV film – well, TVy.
The result is somewhat bland and déjà vu, and the film was almost universally blackballed. Less unkind, The MacMahonian, while not entirely disagreeing, would point out to the fact that the typically rambling plot spares the viewers the usual romantic and melodramatic pieties this type of subject matter often lends itself to, and – although perhaps only from the privileged point of view of just having sat through the entire Bakshi canon – the film exudes a certain “sincerity”.
This concludes The MacMahonian's appraisal of the feature work of Ralph Bakshi. Consistently uneven, sometimes interesting, certainly minor. Like most practitioners of an art that, as André Malraux postulated, is also and industry, his life and career was one of unfulfilled and interrupted projects, financing difficulties, artistic differences, dead ends and disappointments. Had it been otherwise, maybe what he said on film could have come closer to what he might have meant.