Movie Review: Be Cool

I saw Be Cool the other night on DVD. It is the sequel to the 90's hit Get Shorty. Let's cut right to the chase. The film stinks. There are isolated moments of humor, but that's it. I won't even bother with a plot synopsis. All you need to know is it stinks.

I suspect that may have actually been intentional, an example of what passes for cleverness in the movie. The film opens with Chili Palmer talking with a friend. Palmer was seen making the movie Get Leo at the end of Get Shorty. Get Leo is Get Shorty in the Get Shorty universe. Get it? The film was a hit, so he had to make a sequel. The sequel was really bad, so bad that Palmer wants out of the movie business. So, humorously, they made the real sequel to the real Get Shorty just as bad as the imaginary sequel to the imaginary Get Shorty. Aren't you rolling in the aisle at the ingenuity? They made a really bad movie! Har, har.

There are other examples of in-jokes passing as cleverness. In the same opening scene, Palmer talks about the requirements for a PG-13 movie. They will only allow the F-word to be used once. Palmer immediately uses the F-word, then it never shows up again. Har, har. Rocker Steven Tyler shows up and proudly declares that he is a singer who has never appeared in a movie, and won't start now. Har, har. Hilarity ensues.

It is a measure of how bad the film is that none of the few highlights involve any of the prominent actors in the cast. Travolta, Thurman, Vaughn, Keitel, and even Cedric the Entertainer are wasted. The highlights come from action star and former wrestler The Rock and rapper Andre 3000, a.k.a. Outkast. The Rock gives an outrageous turn as a gay enforcer for Vaughn's gangster-wannabe who dreams of being an actor and/or singer. He has made a hilarious music video singing the country song "You're Not Woman Enough to Take My Man" and in the end appears as an exuberant dancer at a music awards show. Elsewhere, I have described The Rock as the successor to Schwarzenegger because of his facility with comedy as well as action. Here he gets the opportunity to really ham it up, and takes full advantage. Andre 3000 plays a gansta rapper who is hilariously incompetent at anything involving gangsta. After some mishaps with a pistol, he tosses it down in disgust and tells his crew that they shouldn't even bother giving him one.

So a pro wrestler and a rapper outshine the likes of John Travolta, Uma Thurman, and Harvey Keitel. That's how bad the movie is.