Sometimes movies deserve a retrial in the court of popular opinion. Consider me Counsel for the Defense. This is The Misunderstood.

Today's Defendant: Ralph Bakshi's 1992 bomb Cool World.

Plea: Not guilty by reason of mis-casting, improper marketing and studio meddling.

When Cool World hit theaters in 1992, America was still in the throes of cartoon/live action mixing thanks to the very successful Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It was a weird period of time just prior to the introduction of CGI, a sort of last hurrah for ink doodles. It's a shame, too, considering how beautiful a lot of American animation had become by the middle of the decade. Even straight-to-video kid's flicks had vivid, fluid artwork and top-notch sound design.

The real problem with the few toon/flesh productions that hit the big screen is that audiences went in with false expectations and studios didn't know how to market them. Neither Roger Rabbit nor Cool World are even remotely aimed for young viewers but they still drew large family crowds because, hey, they had cartoon characters. Never mind that the former was about cartoons who were caught up in a tangled noir plot of infidelity, murder and corruption, while the former is a sex-charged nightmare by the same guy who created Fritz the Cat and Wizards.

I personally saw Cool World on a Sunday afternoon at the age of 8 in a theater full of kids. Of course, when re-watching the movie several years later I realized just how inappropriate for children it actually is, but nobody seemed to get that in 1992. So, it's really no surprise that Cool World got terrible reviews. The billing it got was akin to telling people The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is about the logging industry.

Cool World is still quite flawed, but it's not as awful as its reputation suggests. Bakshi's setting is delightfully twisted and detailed enough that you'll notice something new with each viewing. The real problem is that the movie just doesn't spend as much time there as it should. I would be satisfied watching two surreal hours of Gabriel Byrne wandering around the insane fever dream of Bakshi's invention.

Cool World also deserves some recognition for its unique premise. Just because Kim Basinger isn't a very accurate flesh-translation of Holli Would doesn't mean there isn't a spark of genius in the idea of cartoons becoming real by having sex with humans. If anything, Cool World fails because it isn't dark enough, isn't wild enough. I won't blame Bakshi for that one, though. His script got thrown out almost immediately and got replaced by the work of a team that, short of Poltergeist, specialized in middling hackery. Based on his previous work, Ralph Bakshi's version of Cool World would have been significantly less accessible and thereby a lot more interesting.

At best, I prefer to take Cool World the way I take a lot of potentially great but kinda trashed movies. It's like a pizza that's been charred to near inedibility. Pick the stuff that works and ignore the rest. Bakshi's animation, Brad Pitt's parodic performance and the incredible electronic soundtrack don't need to be called poison just because Kim Basinger and producer Frank Mancuso Jr. ruined the rest. It's a lot like how A.I. needs to be turned off before the incongruously sappy ending.

So, I submit that Cool World still has a lot going for it, provided it's viewed from the proper angle. Ultimately, it's a good thing turned bad by schlockmeisters and a case study in what happens when you pull your creative punches.