Throughout a career that has spanned over 35 years, Brad Pitt has starred in plenty of critically acclaimed hits. He scored near-perfect films with the likes of True Romance, 12 Years a Slave and Moneyball. But with just a 4% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, this bizarre ‘90s cult classic now streaming on Paramount+ is Pitt’s lowest-rated film ever.
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“A surprisingly incompetent film” and “weirdo cartoon diarrhea” is what critics had to say about Cool World, Ralph Bakshi’s 1992 live-action animated fantasy film starring Pitt as a hard-boiled human cop operating within the cartoon realm. The movie started streaming on Paramount+ on April 1st and holds the unfortunate record of being Pitt’s lowest-rated movie, but overtime has transformed into a messy cult classic. The movie follows a cartoonist who is seduced into his own animated creation, Cool World, by a femme fatale doodle who wants to use him to become human, forcing Pitt’s hard-boiled detective Frank Harris to stop her from destroying both the cartoon and real worlds.
Cool World Marked a Career Low for Brad Pitt
Cool World flopped hard in just about every way that it could. The movie grossed just $14 million against a budget of $28 million, making it one of Pitt’s lowest-grossing movies to date and a massive box office bomb, and it didn’t receive much love from critics or even general audiences. Its abysmal and record-low critic score aside, Cool World only garnered a 31% audience rating, ranking it as Pitt’s sixth-lowest-rated movie in terms of Popcornmeter score. Marketed as an adult, edgy alternative to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the movie suffered from chaotic, last-minute script changes, resulting in a movie that critics and audiences agreed suffered from a nonsensical story, poor acting, and ineffective blending of live-action with animation.
However, in the more than three decades since its release, Cool World has evolved from a critical and commercial failure into a recognized cult classic. Although initially bashed, the film’s unique, trippy animation style has gained wider appreciation and was genuinely ahead of its time, and Cool World also features a pretty great dark industrial soundtrack that includes early contributions from Moby. It’s also just one of the most unusual and surreal movies of the ‘90s, helping cement its place as a staple of ‘90s experimental animation.
Other New Movies Now on Paramount+
Cool World made it to Paramount+’s streaming library in April alongside other great titles like Catch Me If You Can, Galaxy Quest, and The Social Network, and the streamer hasn’t slowed down heading into May. Paramount+ kicked off the month with the arrival of movies like Face/Off, Rules of Engagement, and The Hunt for Red October. The rest of May’s arrivals heavily trend toward TV, with the Yellowstone spinoff Dutton Ranch set to premiere on May 15th, followed by the Season 19 premiere of Criminal Minds: Evolution on May 28th.
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