Originally published 3/13/05
Be Cool
Director: F. Gary Gray
Writer: Peter Steinfeld, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
Producers: Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacy Sher
Stars: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn, Cedric the Entertainer, The Rock, Christina Milian, Harvey Keitel, André Benjamin, Robert Pastorelli, Steven Tyler, James Woods
The Hollywood cliché is known as “fish out of water”, and it describes movie stories about characters who leave their natural element, often with comedic results. You don’t see many “fish in water” stories, because what’s funny about that?
In Be Cool, we see that the answer is – not very much. In the original Get Shorty, one of a very short list of successful adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s unimpeachable prose, Chili Palmer (John Travolta) came from the streets to the sunny sidewalks of Hollywood and realized he could thrive on pure swagger. His mob past allowed him to see the hot air and doubletalk for what it was, and that the secret to being a film producer is simply to convince people that you are important.
Back for a sequel, he’s now more of a benevolent tour guide who visits the neighboring music industry. But nothing he encounters there proves to be much of a surprise. There are still gangsters and hipsters both real and posed; the clothes change but not much else. The fish stays securely in the water, and the movie never finds its footing as a result.
It tries, though, it tries awfully hard. Chock full of wearisome entertainment industry in-jokes and references to superior movies (including its predecessor), Be Cool stitches together another whimsical pastiche of hustlers, gives them each a joke or two to bludgeon us with, then sits back and hopes for the best.
Palmer, a decade of success now under his belt, is tiring of the movie business. His old friend Tommy Athens (James Woods) tries to tickle his fancy about the recording business – tells him he’s discovered a singer, Linda Moon (Christina Milian) who has got big star potential. Then, as Palmer steps into the men’s room, Athens has an unfortunate encounter with the Russian Mob.
Vengeance alone might not have been enough to drive him to action, but vengeance plus a change of scenery suits Chili Palmer’s style. He drops in to check out Linda Moon, a photogenic caterwauler (more than a little reminiscent of Beyoncé Knowles) who is wasting away singing disco covers in an ass-wiggling trio called “Chicks International”. How “Chicks International” scores a gig at the Viper Room is a puzzler, one of those cognitively dissonant happenings that follows when you’re trying to impress your L.A. location on the audience without thinking too strenuously about logic.
Palmer likes what he hears and decides to put her career on the fast track, even though he knows nothing about the music industry. As before, though, this proves no trouble at all, though he does rub a few people the wrong way as he goes about it. This is our intro to an iron-fisted manager with a similar street background (Harvey Keitel), his sidekick, who wants badly to be thought of as black (Vince Vaughn), and the bodyguard (The Rock) who doesn’t understand why people think he’s gay just because he likes red boots and performs scenes from Bring it On as audition pieces.
And Palmer rubs a few people the right way, especially Athens’ widow Edie (Uma Thurman), who misses her philandering money-sloppy husband like you might miss a really fun car. She’s determined to save their struggling independent record label…
…which is in debt to rap mogul Sin LaSalle (Cedric the Entertainer), and the list of characters just keeps growing. I haven’t even mentioned swing music-loving hitman Joe Loop (Robert Pastorelli), or Sin’s eager-to-participate brother-in-law Dabu (André Benjamin, aka André 3000 of Outkast) who handles firearms almost as dexterously as he handles his food. And then there are those Russian mobsters.
Within the ranks of the supporting players you can find some enjoyment, since they don’t need to waste time detailing the next story development to us. The Rock, continuing to surprise with his charms, takes his single joke and invests such effortless enthusiasm in it that it’s winning even when it’s not funny. He’s easily the highlight of the movie, and if he continues to select roles where he is allowed to grin at himself, he’ll enjoy a longer, healthier stay in the studio world than previous grappler-turned-thespian Hulk Hogan.
Vince Vaughn amuses too, using the batting average theory that if you do 1,000 things in the time allotted you, surely a few will be funny. Cedric the Entertainer gets some fresh chuckles from a well-worn angle – gangsters gone corporate – while Harvey Keitel looks like he’s not sure why they hired him but he’s determined to see this movie through anyway.
Although Travolta is back in slick black, and Thurman seems to get more sinewy-sexy use out of her body with each passing year, they look weary, like they are exhausted by the burden of keeping us up to speed with all the reverses and doublebacks of the been-there plot. Exposition is still exposition, no matter how stylishly dressed. She manages to boost her thin character with a few daffy details, but Travolta seems unmoored and disconnected from the graceful cool that made his first run as Chili Palmer such a comfortable fit. Inevitably, they dance together, a scene with no higher purpose than making us think of Pulp Fiction.
For all they try to put into the dance, it shines a disadvantageous light back on this product. It’s like the movie is admitting it will never really be any good on its own. No movie should consider it a success to make its audience wish it was watching a different movie. In the very first scene Palmer talks about how sequels are almost never good, particularly when they feel obligatory. But saying it is no way of outsmarting that trap, and that’s the only effort Be Cool even feels like making.