Sequel to 'Get Shorty' is quick to lose its cool
The coolest thing about Be Cool: Hyper-twitchy hambone James Woods gets whacked at the outset. From there to the end credits, however, this sequel to Get Shorty represents the mind-numbing antithesis of cool. And its every effort to be hip - as John Travolta's Hollywood-slumming shylock, Chili Palmer, dips his feet into the music business - creaks with embarrassment. It's as if a Quentin Tarantino concept (and cast - Travolta and his Pulp Fiction sweetie, Uma Thurman, are reunited here) had been handed to a consortium of bumbling, senile hacks. Or (since we're doing as-ifs), as if Ed Wood had been raised from the dead and offered the Be Cool script - which is, like Get Shorty before it, an adaptation of a brisk bit of comedic crime by novelist Elmore Leonard.
The coolest thing about Be Cool: Hyper-twitchy hambone James Woods gets whacked at the outset. From there to the end credits, however, this sequel to Get Shorty represents the mind-numbing antithesis of cool.
And its every effort to be hip - as John Travolta's Hollywood-slumming shylock, Chili Palmer, dips his feet into the music business - creaks with embarrassment. It's as if a Quentin Tarantino concept (and cast - Travolta and his Pulp Fiction sweetie, Uma Thurman, are reunited here) had been handed to a consortium of bumbling, senile hacks. Or (since we're doing as-ifs), as if Ed Wood had been raised from the dead and offered the Be Cool script - which is, like Get Shorty before it, an adaptation of a brisk bit of comedic crime by novelist Elmore Leonard.
How to count the ways that Be Cool isn't? For one thing, it looks terrible: grainy, ill-lit, edited with blunt, rusty shears. Even the slinky Thurman, as the widow of a record-label chief (the aforementioned gunned-down-on-the-street Woods), is captured at angles, in makeup and coifs, that make her seem gawky and ill-at-ease.
Plotwise, Be Cool is mapped out much like its 1995 (and vastly more entertaining) predecessor, with Travolta's confidence-oozing Palmer outwitting various music-biz movers and shakers, subbing for Get Shorty's Hollywood hucksters. He sports a knowledge of song, drives a funny car that turns everybody's head (an energy-saving hybrid instead of a minivan), and sashays through posses of hip-hoppity gangstas, Russian mobsters and Aerosmith roadies, all the time wearing a fixed grin. (The star was probably thinking about his paycheck.)
But the winking wisecracks of Get Shorty are gone, replaced by dopey rap ditties (even Harvey Keitel gets rhymin'), lame-o music-video production numbers, and self-mutilating one-liners from the likes of Steven Tyler. (Warning to moviegoers in the first 10 rows of seats: Close-ups of the lippy Aerosmith front man could be hazardous to your health.)
Be Cool's story centers on a dishy pop ingenue, Linda Moon (Christina Milian), and the various parties trying to hook on her coattails - and contract. In one corner, there's the late Woods' business partner, a pimped-out white guy who speaks in blaxploitation cliches (a chunky Vince Vaughn) and has a gay, aspiring actor as his bodyguard (The Rock, in a brave career move). In another corner, there's Keitel's sleazeball music mogul. Cedric the Entertainer leads a gang of droopy-panted, uber-blinged thugs who have their own reasons for nabbing the fledgling diva. (Outkast's Andre Benjamin steals a scene with his caricature of an armed and dangerous black dude.)
Yes, Be Cool has a Travolta-Thurman dance number - "Sexy," by the Black Eyed Peas and Sergio Mendez - but it's been cut-and-pasted so there's nothing sexy about it. Director F. Gary Gray, who brought a jaunty swagger to the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, does nothing jaunty here.
In a blatant stab to evoke Be Cool's lineage, Get Shorty alum Danny DeVito is trotted out (with Anna Nicole Smith as arm candy) for a cameo. Other folks, music and non, making fleeting, futile appearances: Seth Green, Debi Mazar, Wyclef Jean, Fred Durst, Gene Simmons, Joe Perry, the late Robert Pastorelli, and the RZA.
You may feel like taking a RZA to your wrists after this one.
Contact movie critic Steven Rea
at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.
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Be Cool * 1/2 (out of four stars)
Produced by Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher and David Nicksay, directed by F. Gary Gray, written by Peter Steinfeld, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard, photography by Jeffrey L. Kimball, music by John Powell, distributed by MGM Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 59 mins.
Chili Palmer. . . John Travolta
Edie Athens. . . Uma Thurman
Raji. . . Vince Vaughn
Sin LaSalle. . . Cedric the Entertainer
Linda Moon. . . Christina Milian
Parent's guide: PG-13 (profanity, inanity, violence)
Playing at: area theaters