Be Cool Review!

By Matt Norris: 2004-09-11 00:00:00

Cinema Blend has connections to people. One of these people is NotSoSecretAgent. Many dorks will remember that Notso had the audacity to say he didn’t like Alien vs Predator. THE UNMITIGATED GALL! Oh wait, 80% of folks who saw it didn’t like it either. Anyways, Notso has another exclusive for Cinema Blend! For you one or two fans left of John Travolta, Notso has some news on the next Travolta nail in the coffin, Be Cool. So here is Notso’s review of Be Cool after catching a preview of it.

By the time Be Cool comes out, it will have been 10 years since Get Shorty comes out. Seeing as how Get Shorty was part of John Travolta's first career revival, it seems fitting that he would return to Chili Palmer now that his career is in the proverbial dumps again.

I liked Get Shorty a lot. It was sharp, funny, and had some nice Hollywood satire thrown in there. It was based on a novel by Elmore Leonard. Elmore Leonard also wrote a sequel to Get Shorty called Be Cool, which involves Chili Palmer leaving the movie business and becoming a record producer. I haven't read Be Cool, but judging from the reviews on Amazon, it isn't as good as Get Shorty. The same goes for the film version. But to a much more extreme degree.

Be Cool is just terrible. Not once did I laugh at this overwrought, pseudo-slick piece of F. Gary Gray dog crap. The biggest problem is that it has lost its edge. Rather than being a dark comedy, Be Cool is an uneven mixture of borderline slapstick humor and violent shootouts. Everything flowed seamlessly in Get Shorty, whereas this is just awkward.

Obviously many liberties have been taken with the original novel. For one, Chili Palmer and Uma Thurman's character, Edie, attend a Black Eyed Peas concert. Not only do they do that, but they DANCE. In what has got to be the most shameless attempt at "homage" or whatever you'd call it, John Travolta and Uma Thurman dance AGAIN. It's not even cool or interesting like it was in Pulp Fiction. It's more silly because they're at a Black Eyed Peas concert. Also, John Travolta seems wayyyyy out of his element spouting off bits of musical knowledge, especially considering he just got into the music business not days before he offers nuggets of musical trivia. "I'll bet he doesn't even know who the Sugarhill Gang are," he says. Yeah, right, John. I'll bet YOU don't even know who they are. Do they even let you listen to that hippity-hop music with Scientology?

The movie just doesn't feel like a sequel at all. It's completely different. The humor is so watered-down and obvious. If it wasn't for the NAME Chili Palmer and a couple of Danny DeVito action movie parody posters, this would be a completely different movie. They don't even MENTION Rene Russo's character, who, if I remember right, was Chili Palmer's girlfriend at the end of the first movie. I say the name Chili Palmer, instead of the character Chili Palmer, because the character, like the humor, is watered-down. He's transformed into a completely different person. One could make the argument that he's changed in the ten years since the first movie, but nothing supports why that would be.

The rest of the characters are bland and cliché. Vince Vaughn shows up as Raji, a manager who acts black. His work here is painfully unfunny and really on par with Jamie Kennedy's in Malibu's Most Wanted. I usually like Vince Vaughn a lot, but this is pitiful. Cedric the Entertainer (again, not living up to his name) plays a rich, educated music mogul type who is followed around by three black Hummers full of thugs, led by Andre 3000 from Outkast. No one in this entire outfit is funny. The Rock plays Vince Vaughn's possibly-gay bodyguard who gets really offended when called certain derogatory-towards-gay people terms. The Rock's entire role is more or less acting fruity, which, to me isn't funny. "Too gay to function" stereotypes (thanks, Mean Girls) aren't funny anymore.

The ultra-unfunny script comes courtesy of Peter Steinfeld, the man behind the Analyze That script. Hmm, awful sequel to a decent movie. It's all starting to make sense now¦

- NotSoSecretAgent

Thanks for the review Notso! If you have questions for Notso, figure out how to contact him.

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