Another movie I found looking for movies with comic book elements. Well, Bakshi took that element a step further. “Cool World” reminds of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), but then the story goes both ways. Plus Bakshi turned it into a film not (just) for kids.
“Cool World” has got a nice line-up too. We have a young Brad Pitt, Gabriel Byrne and Kim Basinger.
Frank Harris (Pitt) ends up in the “cool world” after an accident. In this strip world he becomes a “droid” (human) police officer. Jack Deebs (Byrne) is an author of comics who also starts to go and and out of the “cool world”. There he meets his favourite character, the singer Holli Would who has plans to get out of her own world into the world of the “droids”. This succeeds and she even begets a human form played by Basinger.
So we have people entering a strip world and strip elements entering the real world. The strip world is quite over the top with repetative scenes of characters smashing each other to the ground, weird characters flying around, etc., some sort of ADHD old style comic. There are some great findings in the blending of comic and film elements as well, odd characters, weird dialogues. “Cool World” is actually quite cool if you are looking for an old comedy.
