John Travolta plays the oh-so-cool character of entertainment businessman Chili Palmer. He’s more like cold chili.
A superb work of art — be it cinema, poetry or a painting — can satisfy on so many different levels that it transcends ordinary praise or description. Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, for instance, is just full of that special, indefinable something.
Be Cool is full of something all right — it starts with “s” but it sure as sugar ain’t “special.”
This so-funny-I-forgot-to-laugh-out-loud sequel comes an entire decade after its predecessor, Get Shorty, and exactly five years after everyone forgot the plot of that movie.
Not that the back story is even relevant anyway. Be Cool can be grouped with other money-grabbing franchise attempts such as Bad Boys II or A Very Brady Sequel in which knowledge of the original will do little to enhance your enjoyment, or loathing, of what you see.
The story is grueling, uninteresting and complicated by the inclusion of throwaway characters that provide little more than countless celebrity cameos.
Chili Palmer (John Travolta), former Brooklyn wiseguy and current Hollywood player, is so cool, as the title implies, that he hardly winces when his friend is gunned down before his eyes at the start of the film. Chili decides he wants out of the commercial — and dangerous — movie biz, opting to produce records instead.
Enter Uma Thurman, Cedric the Entertainer, Vince Vaughn, pop star Christina Milian and a whole slew of other actors, rappers and singers stuck in this movie. Thurman plays Edie, the chick you know Chili will eventually end up with, thus rendering the whole romance aspect of the film irrelevant.
Milian shows off her amazing pipes over and over and over again, playing budding pop star Linda Moon. The girl can sing, yes, but if you cut out her various five-minute-long performance scenes I have a feeling the movie might be under the motion-picture minimum time.
Meanwhile, Vaughn’s Raji, an idiotic cross between Huggy Bear and Vanilla Ice, frequently trades uninventive barbs with Chili, Linda or whoever else crosses his path. Cedric the Entertainer appears as Sin LaSalle, a music producer who commands an army of hardcore rappers at his disposal.
You could make a short novel listing which celeb plays each character. Suffice it to say The Rock, Outkast’s André 3000, James Woods, Robert Pastorelli, Harvey Keitel, Danny DeVito, the guy who played Garner from Baywatch (GregAlan Williams) and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler all have sizable roles in Be Cool, while The Black Eyed Peas, Wyclef Jean, Fred Durst, Sergio Mendes, Seth Green and Anna Nicole Smith have cameos.
What evolves from this log jam of talent (the last time anyone will ever refer to Anna Nicole Smith as talent) is a convoluted, four-sided quarrel between Nick Carr (Keitel) and his lackey Raji, some Russian mobsters, LaSalle and his gangstas, and Chili and the rest of the good guys. Ugh … thinking about this movie too much gives me a headache.
And let it be known that Tyler is now the frontrunner for the coveted worst actor of all time trophy, ahead of both Shaquille O’Neal and Tara Reid in a close race. In one scene filled with unintentional hilarity, Chili convinces Tyler, who plays himself, that the inspiration for “Sweet Emotion” was the singer’s daughters. Funny, I thought it was the acid, but I guess everyone has his or her own theory.
What’s most insulting about this sad film is director F. Gary Gray’s (The Italian Job) dependence on black and homosexual stereotypes. These are not thoughtfully ironic caricatures like you might see in The Simpsons — Gray depicts his nonwhite characters in a vitriolic and ignorant fashion.
LaSalle, who sports a throwback jersey over his button-up shirt, is a hateful depiction that implies black males should feel ashamed when they make enough money to live in the ’burbs. André 3000, who is charismatic and one of the only bright spots in the flick, nonetheless plays a stereotypical, gun-toting gangsta rapper.
How ironic to see one of the most intelligent minds in hip hop used to display the filmmaker’s obvious disdain for the genre. And I’ll bet The Rock’s portrayal of a flamboyantly gay singer/actor, at whom other characters hurl slurs, won’t help the gay acceptance movement.
Kudos to Gray for offending my senses on so many levels (seriously, do we need another Travolta-Thurman dance scene?). Either this film is an avant-garde masterpiece designed to piss off audiences by being thoroughly unfunny, banal and odious or it just does so by accident (I’ll assume the latter).
