Brad Pitt’s Lowest-Rated Movie Ever Is This Bizarre Fantasy That Scored Just 4% on Rotten Tomatoes

Does anyone remember the greatly maligned 1992 feature Cool World? The film is a weird genre mashup, mixing live-action with animation. It was directed by the renowned animator, Ralph Bakshi, who is known for his distinctive and controversial work on projects such as Fritz the Cat, Fire & Ice, Wizards, and more. Though, while Bakshi is celebrated for his independent, subversive animated visions, the final version of Cool World is not the story he intended to tell.

Despite an impressive cast featuring prestigious actors, such as Brad Pitt, Kim Basinger, and Gabriel Byrne, Cool World was unable to rouse audiences and flopped upon its release, still standing as the lowest-rated movie of Pitt’s illustrious career, with a 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So, how exactly did this visually spectacular film become such a critical and commercial disaster?

Ralph Bakshi’s Original Vision of ‘Cool World’ Was Far Different

It’s difficult to describe the central story of Cool World, but we’ll give it a go. The story follows a young soldier, Frank Harris (Pitt), who has recently returned home from World War II and is in mourning after his mother dies in a tragic drunk-driving accident. But, with no time to get emotional, Harris is dragged into a bizarre alternate dimension of strange animated creatures. Many years later, the cartoonist Jack Deebs (Byrne) is pulled into the same alternate dimension he had dreamed about, “Cool World”, which inspired his work. There, he is seduced by the animated femme fatale Holli Would (Basinger), who wants to have sex with Jack because it will make her human, allowing her to travel to the real world. In the meantime, Harris has become a police officer in Cool World, where he is on high alert, for it is against the dimension’s law for a human to have sex with a cartoon or “Doodle.”

Yet, despite this outlandish plot being in line with Bakshi’s other bizarre movies, this was never how the director envisioned Cool World to play out. Indeed, Bakshi had hoped to create an adult horror movie with a mix of live-action and animated elements. As the director explained in a 2004 interview with DVD Verdict, his storyline involved the cartoonist sleeping with the femme fatale character, who was originally named Debbie Dallas. Their affair results in the birth of a half-cartoon and half-human hybrid child. The child, growing up hating his father, would travel to the real world and become a killer, resenting his father for abandoning him.

Paramount immediately bought Bakshi’s pitch, but the studio soon perverted Bakshi’s artistic vision with Frank Mancuso Jr, the son of the former Paramount Studios head Frank Mancuso Sr, producing the film while implementing his own vision over Bakshi’s project.

‘Cool World’ Suffered From a Chaotic Production

Image via bakshistudio.com

Bakshi claims that Mancuso Jr. mandated script rewrites behind his back, creating the more awkward, nonsensical storyline of the final film. Additionally, Bakshi wanted Drew Barrymore for the Debbie Dallas role, but instead, he was forced to cast Basinger, whose character was renamed “Holli Would.” Basinger and Bakshi were also at odds over the film, since Basinger wanted to portray more of a Tex Avery-type female heroine. Basinger wanted to create a movie that she could show to sick children in hospitals, something similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, however, Bakshi envisioned an adult animated/live-action horror film.

Paramount erred by green-lighting Bakshi’s vision because they probably did not understand what the director sought to achieve. The studio likely wanted a movie similar to the classic film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as it also blended live-action and animated styles. However, that was not what Bakshi was aiming for with Cool World. The final product showcases how Bakshi, Basinger, and the studio executives were all at odds, creating a messy hodgepodge of a film that was a mess of tonal styles. Despite the narrative’s adult thematic subject matter, Mancuso Jr.’s changes forced the movie to release with a PG-13 rating, resulting in a film that is too edgy and risqué for kids and families and too obfuscating, nonsensical, and weird for adult audiences.

In a 2017 interview with Cartoon Brew, Bakshi explained how the studio made everything in Cool World look too “cleaned up,” such as the bar scene where Basinger sings a duet with Frank Sinatra Jr. His original idea for the scene entailed a setting in “a dirty western bar.” Bakshi wanted a dirtier, sleazier, and grimier film that embraced a more adult thematic style. Unfortunately, the producers refused to embrace the avant-garde vision of the creator of such subversive works as Fritz the Cat, Coonskin, and Heavy Traffic, despite hiring Bakshi to do just that.

Why ‘Cool World’ Flopped

It’s no wonder that Cool World was savaged by critics upon its release. The story becomes nigh-incomprehensible in its second half as the narrative evolves into a weird action-adventure where the main characters look to possess a magic spike, which Holli wants to use to gain ultimate power. However, the spike’s chaotic powers nearly transform everyone in the real world into super-deformed cartoon characters. Some of the animated Doodles have striking designs and silhouettes, yet few of them come across as fully immersive, well-rounded characters. In contrast, Roger Rabbit, Baby Herman, or Benny the Cab from Who Framed Roger Rabbit are much more fully realized, feeling like living, breathing characters in their zany world.

Cool World, to its credit, features some impressive animation sequences, especially some of the background art, along with an interesting mix of modern and classic animation styles. In later years, Bakshi admitted to Cartoon Brew that he had fun with the film’s animation style and collaborated well with some of the artists who got their big breaks from working on the project, but with that being said, it’s no surprise that Bakshi never directed another feature again after Cool World. For an Oscar-winning actor like Pitt, the film is little more than a joke at press junkets and a relic of his past he’d likely rather forget.