Cool and the Crazy

Unhappily married couple Roslyn (Alicia Silverstone) and Michael (Jared Leto) lead separate affairs that lead to violent repercussions for all.

This was one of the last films from American International Pictures, produced by Lou Arkoff and Debra Hill. The director was Ralph Bakshi, who had made his name with "Fritz the Cat" and "Heavy Traffic".

Some credit should be given for the casting, as both leads have now gone on to bigger things and most likely few people have ever seen or even heard of this picture (hardly a gem).

What is most strange is the morality of the narrative. Cheating is not so much a bad thing in itself (according to this film), but bad when things turn violent with the competition. So, I guess, if married women choose better men to have affairs with, the whole thing is no big deal...

I never saw "Beverly Hills 90210," but I did see "Rebel Without a Cause". It's possible that this film could be a hybrid of both with its "who's going to sack up with whom" dramatics, as well as the occasional flashes of gang violence and car chases. This story, however, is set in the '50s.

Alicia Silverstone and Jared Leto were high-school-sweethearts-turned-young marrieds-with-an-unplanned-child couple who struggle to find themselves amid a marriage gone sour. Alicia is cheating on Jared with bad-boy Joey (Matthew Flint, in a loud, obnoxious performance), so Jared decides to get even.

The film's jazz soundtrack adds some ambience to the film, and the seedy look of L.A. during the fifties is OK, but on the whole, "The Cool and the Crazy" is mainly for fans of the stars. Ralph Bakshi might want to stick to his cartoons from now on...

A melodrama, sketches from the lives of three couples celebrating their weddings at the same time. All of them decide to get married early, although by the standards of the 1950s this fact is not really something special. Despite the seemingly serious attitude at first, and the fact that two couples have children, they themselves are in many ways far from understanding adult life and the concept of responsibility as such - they quarrel like teenagers, without looking, go on spontaneous benders, commit rash acts, confusing one thing or another with some abstract freedom, which they themselves cannot define. As usual, petty squabbles and random connections eventually accumulate like a snowball and one day can / will come out sideways. As a result, it can be concluded that watching the twists and turns of young and sometimes hysterical newlyweds who are not particularly smart is more boring than interesting, regardless of the relative vitality of the stories in question, as real life can be very different.

There is a 1958 film with the same name, "The Cool and the Crazy", but apart from the name and some subtleties, it does not have any common plot features with the 1994 version, which, among other things, separately suggests the idea of how much the later film adaptations are in fact a free narrative with a predominance of the vision of the directors of the 1990s and how much they actually reflect the spirit of the past.

I really liked this movie. It is very hard to find since it is out of production. It is about Roslyn, played very well by Alicia Silverstone,who is a young newly-wed with marital problem. She goes out wtih her friend, played by Jennifer Blanc, to a dance and meets bad boy, Joey, played by Matthew Flint. Joey is no good, and is married himself, and this affair is hopeless from the beginning. What I like about this movie is that Alicia is EXTREMELY believeable when she is on the beach with Joey and she tells him to stop his advances, but she also wants him to continue. She whispers desperately, out a different era in American high school dating, for him to stop, "someone will see us", etc. The choice of soft backround music from the 50's really set the mood, also. Why this movie has had so little attention, and why your other writers do not seem to forcast the eventual greatness of Alicia Silverstone from this movie is beyond me. Of course, now the only edition of this movie is in PALS, in German.

With Cool World being a critical and commercial bust, Ralph Bakshi found his last feature film work making a movie for Showtime based on a script he'd had laying around for more than twenty years. Well, it certainly does feel like the work of a much younger and inexperienced filmmaker than someone who had been making feature films since the early 70s, but this is Ralph Bakshi we're talking about. Getting the young talents of future stars Alicia Silverstone and Jared Leto is kind of amazing considering, and Leto in particular does everything he can. However, the film is just an endless stream of thin cliches, dull caricatures, and half-thought out tripe in the guise of wisdom, holding no real interest from beginning to end.

Michael (Leto) and Roslyn (Silverstone) are high school sweethearts who married right after school, had a baby, and are struggling to find the happiness they expected from the American dream. He doesn't get paid enough and is gone too long. She has to take care of the baby (and also works? I think), and their sex life is boring. Roslyn's friend Joannie (Jennifer Blanc) begins an affair, and it makes her happier, opening up the idea to Roslyn who decides to take a ride home from Joey (Matthew Flint) one day when she catches his eye. They're quickly having an affair (the seduction scene is so on the nose and unsexy it could only come from Bakshi), and Michael figures it out. There are fights and screaming. Roslyn and Joannie are completely disgusted that Michael would even consider the idea that they were having affairs. Roslyn and Michael end up splitting after Roslyn won't stop hanging out with Joannie.

Michael hooks up with a coworker, Lorraine (Christine Harnos), who is a beatnik and can't believe, like, all of Michaels bougie hangups, man. She tells him off by saying something about how he wants something that can't exist: a happy marriage, essentially. The Roslyn Joey affair grows with Joey hating his own wife, being a general thug, dealing drugs sometimes, killing people other times, and lording over Roslyn while manipulating her easily. Joannie and Roslyn realize they had it good with their husbands even if life was kind of dull, there's an attempt at reconciliation, but we need an action ending so there's some ruckus in the café, a car chase, and an attempted murder to iron things out. And then...Michael and Roslyn don't actually end up together?

I just can't with this movie. It's a completely uninteresting vignette of half-remembered mores being broken forty years after they were broken and left behind, the kinds of things that Bakshi had been making fun of to one degree or another since Fritz the Cat. It's just told in a straight, melodramatic style this time instead of with animated characters and some kind of supposedly slick satirical edge (that his earlier films never really had anyway).

As I wrote earlier, Leto gives the role of Michael his all, but Michael is more caricature than character, so his valiant efforts only go so far. Silverstone is more out of her depth (she's just honestly not a great actress) in a role that honestly should have been a walk in the park. The only performance really worth paying attention to is Flint as Joey, and that's mostly because he's the one allowed to go furthest in terms of the actual crazy that the film's title implies. It's mostly empty show, though. There's nothing to really grasp onto here.

I really just see this as the final proof that Ralph Bakshi simply had no idea what he was doing when he set out to make a career in feature films. This is the last nail in the coffin of his career, and it was rightfully earned. That it's mostly just boring instead of animatingly dreadful is something, I guess, though.