MovieChat Forums > Cool World (1992) Discussion > Kim Basinger's performance once she beco...

Kim Basinger's performance once she becomes human...


Does anybody else think that this is what really drags the movie down given how grating it is? I'm kind of surprised that it wasn't until she appeared in Fifty Shades Darker 25 years later that she finally "won" the coveted Razzie Award:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-legitimately-Kim-Basingers-worst-performance-in-a-movie/answer/Jordan-Ketchersid

In my opinion, it would probably be Cool World. Following the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? other animators wanted to make the next big animated hit. Ralph Bakshi had his own idea, being well known for more adult-oriented animated movies. Unfortunately for Bakshi, his original idea/concept was taken over and it went from a movie that would have had a hard R rating to something closer to PG-13, but it got watered down further primarily at Kim Basinger’s insistence that it be a movie her kids could watch.

Bakshi’s original idea for the movie focused on a serial killer who was the way he was because one parent was from the “real world” and the other was a cartoon. Being a hybrid of both worlds, but also an outcast from both had a horrifying and detrimental affect on him. I forget how the ideas regressed from there exactly, but the end product was pretty lousy.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-legitimately-Kim-Basingers-worst-performance-in-a-movie/answer/Mike-Prinke

The answer is certainly Ralph Bakshi’s Cool World. As an absolute disaster of a film very few things in it can be said to have redeeming qualities, but Basinger’s performance as Holli Would is a special kind of horrible. This is due in large part to incongruities between her expectations of the role (she wanted it to be a kids’ movie), Bakshi’s intended direction (a hard R horror film), and the radical alterations forced upon the film by studio executives, leading to an un-salvagable production.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-legitimately-Kim-Basingers-worst-performance-in-a-movie/answers/67927238

It’s the reason why I hate animations. She, Brad Pitt, & Gabriel Byrne were awful. Pitt has never been great in anything, not even Seven. He’s always been “tolerable” but in Cool World he was ear-piecing trying to sound, I think, Italian.

Gabriel Byrne has pretty much always looked sophisticated & seasoned in his movies. In Cool World he looked like a washed up actor. And this performance was before the stylishly awesome Point of No Return & the movie with one of the best plot twist ever—The Usual Suspects.

But when it comes to Kim Basinger. Oh boy.

She—along with Brad & Gabriel—made this film look as though a 15 year old kid wrote a script & they decided to jump in it. Her accent was horrible. Her performance was shameful. The visuals literally played off sexual seduction the whole time. Her character, Holli Would [Hollywood], is a generic hybrid of Jessica Rabbit & Marilyn Monroe.[1]

became Kim. It was bland. Unlike Marilyn, who couldn’t act (Kim could) Marilyn actually somehow pulled off lame acting as awe-inspiring. Whereas Kim couldn’t make a terrible script look decent with her then-moderately-caliber acting.

In fact, the movie first appears decent to watch until the animations come into the picture. It goes from tolerable to weird (but still watchable). Then enters Brad—weird becomes stale (barely watchable). Enter Kim—stale becomes what-the-fuck-is-this-shit! Unwatchable.

And that’s sad because Kim Basinger is very pleasing to look at. But not even delicious beauty could force me to watch the entire movie. To this date, I’ve never seen the last 40–45 minutes of Cool World. And I’m a guy that insist on finishing something I undertake.

I just can’t do it with this film. Even after LA Confidential & 8 Mile, I just can’t convince myself that perhaps it might have a “cult classic” feel now—go ahead, try it. Nope. Can’t do it.

Cool World is legitimately her worst performance because:

—She’s performing like an imitation of Marilyn Monroe;

—Her performance is all over the place: Holli seems to have no center of gravity. As the toon, Holli/Kim presents an understandable case for her existence; as the live version, Holli/Kim seems like a loose canon firing emotional shots all over the place but instead of shells every now & again hitting their targets, they’re tomatoes exploding in midair.


—Simply put: she looks silly. Not Robin Williams-Flubber silly or Chris Tucker-5th Element-silly. But rather Pam Anderson in anything other than Baywatch-silly. Barb Wire-silly!

Kim Basinger will not pull a Jeff Bridges outstanding comeback performance onslaught: Iron Man, Crazy Heart, TRUE—f**kin’—GRIT, & Kingsman. The best she could possibly get is a brief moment of success in a top-rated network show like Jennifer Jason Leigh did in Weeds or Rebecca De Mornay did in Jessica Jones.

https://lebeauleblog.com/2016/01/07/golden-raspberry-awards-1992/5/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBUcCU-liuA#t=28m29s

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Perhaps.

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I'm starting to suspect that a fundamental problem is that Kim Basinger is in real life and by nature, very introverted. People who aren't naturally charismatic and aren't genuine extroverts try to make up for it by expelling too much energy. In other words, their idea of being charismatic is to become a large ham or vamp.

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To be fair, in another time frame, I think that had I Dream of Jeannie been made into a feature film, Kim Basinger could've made a great Jeannie. She was sort like Barbara Eden in the sense that there was a naivety and innocence about her that actually enhanced her sex appeal.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPOCGGdDDtl/

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Interesting.

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Kim Basinger I believe, is one of those actors who for better or worse, rightly or wrongly, has an almost fearless willingness to do or try just about anything for a reaction regardless of how foolish or embarrassing she may come across. Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls also performed in that kind of manner. The thing is Basinger I think, can also be an actor who plays things so sincerely and really without a shred of irony, that she really doesn't realize that we're laughing at her instead of with her, if that makes sense.

The "Let's Make Love" scene is a good example of what I'm talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBpNFLngzT4

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What do you expect?
Theres no real aftermath impact.

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Interesting.

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I never really thought about it until hearing the "How Did this Get Made" podcast. But Kim Basigner once she comes a live-action being seems to act as if she's in an entirely different movie. When she's still an animated character, she is clearly the smartest and most in control individual in the room. She was to put it in another way, a master manipulator.

But once we get to the life-action portion of her character, she seems to want to play things as if it were a light, screwball comedy like her prior movies such as Blind Date and more specifically, My Stepmother is An Alien. She becomes this naive, hyperactive child and she starts playing up her southern accent.

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