CORPORATE LINE: John Travolta is back as Chili Palmer in Be Cool, a sequel to the comedy smash Get Shorty. This time, Chili becomes a different kind of “hit” man – he abandons the movie industry to bring his wiseguy skills and negotiation tactics to the music business.
When a friend is offed while they’re at lunch, Chili takes the opportunity to visit the guy’s wife, Edie (Thurman), and pitch himself as her new business partner at an independent record label. With a promising young pop-star-in-training as his protégé (Milian), Chili has to juggle her faux-urban manager (Vaughn), his gay, wannabe-actor bodyguard (The Rock), Russian mobsters, and an eloquent gangsta music producer (Cedric) to save the label and land a hit – and keep from getting popped himself.
THE GOOD: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is Be Cool’s biggest surprise. You’d think with a cast of all-stars that an ex-wrestler wouldn’t have a chance—instead he shines as a gay bodyguard that mocks his own real-life image. The Rock trying on shiny red boots and giving himself a smack on the behind is classic as is his dialogue from Bring It On. The Rock is someone who can make fun of himself and his image and that’s refreshing.
Cedric the Entertainer as the Ivy League educated, thug producer is hysterical. Then there is Vince Vaughn playing a scum-bag manager wanna-be pimp who acts black. He is literally so annoying that you want to take a baseball bat to him—that is good acting.
THE BAD: The story. It’s supposed to be about Chili’s new found talent Linda Moon, played by Christina Milian. The problem is that Milian gets lost in a story that no one cares about. In fact, the end of Be Cool looks like little more than a full length Hollywood music video with an all-star cast. Anyone that knows anything about the music industry can tell you that one performance with a legend does not make you a star. Outside of the people at that show no one else would even know the show took place or would they care. To act as if this were a launch pad for a musical career is laughable.
FRANKLY: Be Cool is the sort of movie you want so bad to be good that it can almost skew your perception of it—yet in the end it never musters enough energy to equal its fantastic cast. Be Cool attempts tries hard to be cool by twisting irony into some sort of pretzel and while it tries to make fun of Hollywood and its predictability you can only laugh as Be Cool ends up being everything we dislike about Hollywood movies—all flash and no soul.
+ Charlie Craine
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