| BE COOL |
 2005
- USA
Director: F. Gary Gray - Reviewed by Vickie 
Someone somewhere needs to tell John Travolta that we all remember the
fact that he can dance and that he doesn’t need to insert pointless,
extended “dance sequences” into all of his films to remind us. All they
do is bring the action to a screeching halt while Travolta and his
dance partner of choice strut and posture on a dance floor for several
minutes of minimalist, non-dance movements. Be Cool, the sequel
to Get Shorty, contains just such a scene, and it adds nothing
to the story except allowing audience members time for a pee break, if
needed.
Travolta reprises his role as one-time mobster Chili Palmer, who’s grown bored of the film industry and sets his sights on breaking into the music business alongside Edie Athens (Uma Thurman), the comely widow of James’ Woods quickly offed mogul, Tommy. Chili thinks he’s found The Next Great Superstar in Linda Moon (singer Christina Milian, making her big-screen debut), but there’s the pesky business of her contract to sort out. That contract, and the various music types who have some stake in where it winds up, forms the central story of the film. Everybody wants money and, after a while, everybody wants Linda. There’s Raji (Vince Vaughn), an unfortunate buffoon and even more unfortunate dresser; Sin LaSalle (Cedric the Entertainer), a gun-wielding producer waiting for $300,000 he’s owed; and slimy Nick Carr (Harvey Keitel), who signed Linda and isn’t ready to let her out of his stable of talent. The Rock and André 3000 are thrown in for added oomph as, respectively, a gay bodyguard and a bumbling rapper. Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard, Be Cool has a lot of things going for it, not the least of which is it expansive, eclectic cast. But it’s also burdened by a slow-moving story, an unnecessarily beefy running time and a surprisingly flat performance by Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. There were numerous instances where I checked my watch because it felt like the movie was just c-r-a-w-l-i-n-g along with no discernable direction, and just when it seemed like the end was near... it wasn’t. Not since LOTR: The Return of the King has a movie had so many false endings! I’m also one of those people who doesn’t understand the continuing appeal of John Travolta. As he’s aged, he’s grown increasingly stiff and wooden, and that fake hair he’s sporting makes the top of his head look like a brown putting green. To be fair, Chili is intended to be kind of tough, so I wasn’t expecting him to float across the screen, waving his arms and emoting, but still. Speaking of which, The Rock is stuck with a character who winds up as one of the saddest gay stereotypes in recent memory. Why does the bodyguard have to (literally) prance around in sparkly clothes just because he’s gay? Why the Hello Kitty memorabilia in his apartment? The inane performances? Why couldn’t he have been gay and not seemed like he just fell off a float at the Richard Simmons May Day Parade?? Is the thought of a butch gay man so far outside the box for Hollywood?? It just seemed sad and mildly homophobic (witness the typical “ewww! get away from me, you queer!” reactions of the film’s straight men). *sigh* There were several moments where I laughed out loud, and almost all were due to André 3000’s Dabu. So dim, but so funny. But, overall, I left the theater with a decidedly ambivalent feeling. I didn’t hate it, but I certainly didn’t love it. |
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