SparkMore
n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
sol-
Whereas 'Get Shorty' focused on a mob debt collector turned motion picture producer, this flamboyant sequel has the former debt collector trying his hand at the music industry after become disillusioned with Hollywood. As a long-awaited sequel (released ten years after the original), 'Be Cool' opened to harsh criticism and mixed reviews, but watched more than ten years further down the track, it stacks up better than one might expect. The dialogue is extremely self-referential with John Travolta's protagonist hilariously lamenting the fact that Hollywood does so many sequels and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler announcing that he doesn't want to be "one of those singers who turns up in movies" for a quick money grab. 'Be Cool' also does a great job quoting much of 'Get Shorty''s iconic dialogue and there is an even amusing billboard for 'Mr. Lovejoy' - the original movie's unmade film-within. Not all of the self-aware elements work with the filmmakers trying a bit too hard to reference 'Pulp Fiction' given the reteaming of Travolta and Uma Thurman; the characters are also goofier this time round, which results in there never being much sense of danger in the air. In general though, the film is mostly good news. Not all of the ensemble cast are in top form (OutKast's André 3000 is especially irksome) but the ones who are in good form simply shine. Dwayne Johnson is particularly noteworthy as a bodyguard who is oblivious to his gay mannerisms and who Travolta keeps managing to disarm by telling him that he has movie star qualities.
johnnyboyz
"Everybody BE COOL. You, BE COOL." An early line from a memorable scene in a film that I really rather like, that being 1996's From Dusk Till Dawn. Clooney's demand was the crescendo to a series of threats directed at a petrified shop clerk outlining exactly what he expected from him in his behaviour as a state trooper messed about off screen in another room. The line was straight out of a script penned by Quentin Tarantino, with said feature released at a time when he was hitting the sorts of heights most American film-makers in the then-recent times could only dream of. Skip forward to early 2005, and the F. Gary Gray film entitled "Be Cool", an adaptation of a novel by Elmore Leonard of the same name which THINKS it's a film running on a Tarantino script, but in actual fact, is a bit of a turgid mess.John Travolta is back playing gangster gone-straight Chilli Palmer, a man whom has been working in the American film business out in L.A. for a good ten years following the conclusion of 1995's Get Shorty from whence this is a sequel. Palmer's been doing well, he's a legal businessman whom retains some of the old threatening abilities and criminally infused characteristics to help business tick by. But Palmer's become a little disenchanted with the industry; angry at new censorship rules and the manner in which Hollywood is so enthused in churning out good-for-nothing sequels, the likes of which end up allowing its smiling leads, in Danny De Vito's fictional actor Martin Weir, to fall out of nightclubs named things like 'The Viper' arm-in-arm with a hooker. De Vito occupies a prominent place on the film's poster: be aware this is all he has to do in the film. Frustrated, annoyed and somewhat eerily unperturbed following a near death encounter during a drive-by hit on music industry tycoon Tommy Athens (Woods), Palmer shifts careers and breezes into said business to get some fire back in his life.The film remains interesting for a while longer when he chances upon young Linda Moon (Milian) dancing in a club, a talented and promising singer whom struggles to make ends meet as she potters around in an old, beat up car as woefully vacuous gangsta' rap artists prevail monumentally in the intrepid rolling out of a new rap song every so often. After Moon makes such an impression on Palmer, he makes a move so as to remove her from a dead end contract with Vince Vaughn's ridiculous gangster-come-manager Raji and into his new set up with a company formerly run by drive-by victim Athens. Meanwhile, record producer Nick Carr (Keitel) is a sleazy, misogynist man inhabiting this sickly effective auditorium decked out in 1970s mise-en-scene from whence he constructs his sordid, commercialised ideas linked to girl groups. This is as good as it gets, with Gray's shifting of Palmer into the music industry not half as interesting as Levinson's shifting of him into the movie business - for those whom had a lukewarm reaction to Get Shorty, this speaks volumes.The best thing about Get Shorty was Dennis Farina's angry, loud mouthed Miami gangster Ray Barboni; the film sagging whenever he wasn't on screen involved in some of the film's funniest material. Who cold forget his tirade directed at a cab driver about local beaches? Here, there is no Farina: just a woeful Uma Thurman doing the worst rendition of a woman in a state of grieving probably ever put to film; a dull Dwayne Johnson playing homosexual bodyguard Elliot therefore acting as the butt of every homophobic joke you can think of and a character in Vince Vaughn's Raji so absurd and so unbelievable that we entrust his entire character as a mere act until he is dangled over the edge of a thirty storey balcony and yet retains both the voice; mannerisms and demeanour that he has done throughout up to this point - the joke was on us. The characters are ineffectual cartoons whom just happened to be inhabiting a world of hard boiled fiction; while the last time I saw Travolta and Keitel on screen together, they had a dead body on their hands and one was helping the other dispose of it in 1994's Pulp Fiction. No Winston Wolf clean up operation would ever be enough to bail everybody out of this mess. Additionally; there's a sad, knowing irony behind The Rock's presence. He's effectively playing himself, in that he's a struggling actor whom comes with a reputation and wants 'in' on the big time, although can only do really badly with an unflattering role he eventually gets: much like here. None of Gray's previous films have bothered me as much as Be Cool, arriving in the 90s from a career in music video production, about a twentieth of this film IS a music video. Recently I was lucky enough to have seen a British film from 2008 entitled Flashbacks of a Fool; the director was a certain Baillie Walsh, and himself came from a background directing music videos. Characters danced and sung together in that film, often in slow motion, but Walsh is a director whom knows when and where to apply such scenes so as to instill feeling and emotion therein, thus enabling them to resonate with the viewer. Gray appears to believe the sheer novelty of having Travolta and Thurman mincing around on a dance-floor during one sequence is enough to instill his film with a certain sense of something, when it just comes across as daft and intrepid. Oh how he, and all of those that enjoyed the film, are wrong. Be Cool crosses that line which separates intelligent pastiche from collective backslapping; the gags about rock stars making cameos and such are funny, but only to the makers of this whom are surely laughing unforgivably back at us.
Sirus_the_Virus
Barry Sonnefeld's Get Shorty was such a funny film that I was excited to see the sequel, Be Cool. I was happy to see John Travolta and Danny De Vito return. But my smile quickly faded away. What happened? Get Shorty was so funny and clever and Be Cool lost it's brain. The cast got bigger, the humor got destroyed. I never ever thought I would see Chili Palmer(John Travolta) go into the music business. Be cool lost it's cool. Why would they cast Vince Vaughn as a gangster? Well, why would they cast him as Norman Bates is the real question. Uma Thurman isn't quite as likable as Rene Russo in Get shorty. I didn't like Bee cool all that much. i give it a thumbs down because I know fans of the first film will be disappointed. I sure as hell know I was. Ugh. I keep scratching my head thinking about how much better this film could've been. I never read the books, by Elmore Leonard, the genius behind Jackie Brown and 3:10 to Yuma. If this film is so bad it means that the book must be as bad. Or maybe not. Director F. Gary Gray doesn't quite have what Barry Sonnenfeld had. I think people who loved the original will be disappointed. I was. Be cool is partially a rip off of Pulp fiction if you think about it. Because Travolta and Thurman dance yet again. But this time around it is a bit painful. The film is a bit painful. But by a bit, I mean a lot.Be Cool: *1/2 out of ****
