The Weekend Review: Cool World

In which I review a selection of last weekend's entertainment.

Aside - As I settle in down South, this looks like it's going to be my last week of "catch up" around here.  Next week should see me settling into my new posting schedule for good.  Also, thanks to Becky and Melissa, it looks like I should be able to continue reviewing Arrow, The Flash and South Park.

Those of you who have stuck around for a while will remember how, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I was unable to convince Becky that she she did not actually want to watch I Spit on Your Grave for one of our Date Nights.  I told her that it was not enjoyable in the traditional sense, that it dealt with an excessively uncomfortable subject matter and even that it was grossly inappropriate for the holiday season.  But no matter what I said to dissuade her, she was adamant that that was the movie that she wanted to see.

This last weekend saw a near-identical repeat of impotent dissuasion.  When it came out that one of our friends had not seen the hyper-sexual Cool World, nothing could stop the inevitability of us showing it to him: not that it is a pornographic rip-off of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, not that its plot is riddled with the worst kind of post hoc logic and not its shockingly low productions values, mostly featuring reused stock animation from Tex Avery's reject pile.  It was going to happen and nobody with the sense enough to try could do anything at all to stop it.

But at that point, what can you do, really?

After crossing into an animated dimension known as Cool World in the post-war 1940's, veteran Frank Harris becomes a detective to uphold its one rule: humans ("noids") do not have sex with doodles.  To do so would damage "the inter-world matrix," resulting in the annihilation of both the 3-D world and Cool World.  That's right; Brad Pitt's character is a professional cock block.  And, given that he's the only human in Cool World, that's just exceedingly sad.

Despite the apocalyptic risks, doodle vixen Holli Would (see what they did there?) is so desperately obsessed with the 3-D world that she lures cartoonist Jack Deebs to Cool World for the sole purpose of seducing him which, incidentally, will transform her into Jessica Chastain and allow her to cross over into the 3-D world.  Yeah, I know... I know.  Just go with it.

Poor schlub.  If only he knew that she was using him for sex.

While I understand the reason why the movie looks the way that it does, that's still no excuse for it.  Rather than blending the physical set pieces with the superimposed animation, the 2-D, painted, wooden props actually stick out like the furnishings of Peewee's Playhouse.  They emphasize, rather than lessen, the surreality of the mis-en-scene and constantly remind the viewer just how inherently wrong everything looks.  It is a complete visual overload: too much, too soon, too often.  Like the stark, unrelentingly white lighting of Dogville or the set design of Moulin Rouge!, it physically hurts to watch this movie.

The film's script is essentially a non-entity: only there because there technically had to be something to sandwich between strip teases and sex with an off-brand Jessica Rabbit.  Things happen, then are only explained as an after thought: and, even then, poorly.  And, when plot and eroticism prove incapable of stretching out its run time to the necessary length, random cut-away animations of cartoon violence and depravity are inserted.

While noids and Doodles having sex being bad was hammered in since Detective Harris first arrived on the scene, the centrally important reason why is only  revealed over an hour into the film, after it's already happened.  It's never explained why or how Noids can travel between worlds, only that sometimes - when necessitated by plot - it happens.  It's never explained what "The Spike of Power," really is, why it had to be implanted at the top of a casino nor why Professor Whiskers - who I'm sure many of you will be shocked to discover is not a cat - had to cross over to Vegas to put it there.  It's never explained why he never returned to Cool World nor why he was able to cross between worlds as a doodle, given that noids are seemingly the only beings able of doing so.

Only after Harrison dies is it revealed that noids killed by doodles are resurrected as doodles themselves: something that is obviously happened often enough in Cool World as to become common knowledge.  Given that Harrison's personal narrative was never any more complex than "I want to have sex with my doodle girlfriend, but I can't because I'm a noid," it's absolutely flabbergasting that nobody there ever capped him as a favor.  As the film's denouement, it is a supremely unsatisfying retcon in order to check off the requisite happy ending.

When it really comes down to it, Cool World is a few precious money shots away from being a uniquely-themed porno.  Its only draws are the sexual exploitation of Holli Would and the visual appeal of Jessica Chastain.  When like-minded dreck like Monkeybone utimately do a better job of creating a surrealistic landscape born from the presumed imagination of a tortured cartoonist, you know that the film in question is a hot mess.  I feel exceedingly generous in giving it a 2.5 out of 10.

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