Be Cool Movie Review:


Chili Palmer is probably one of the most interesting characters John Travolta has brought to the screen right beside Vincent Vega and Tony Manero. Travolta’s gangster with an obsession with the movie business was such a delight in 1995’s “Get Shorty”. So why did it take him 10 years to step back into Chili’s shoes?

“Be Cool” finds slick gangster Chili Palmer visiting with record mogul Tommy Athens (James Woods). Athens wants Chili to produce a movie on his life but really Chili just wants out of the movie business. As their meeting concludes, Chili exits to the men’s room and the patio where he met with Athens is littered with bullets from a drive-by shooting leaving Athens dead. Welcome to the music business, Chili.

Chili visits Edie Athens (Uma Thurman), the widow of Tommy Athens, where he asks Edie if he could become her new partner on the record label left to her by Tommy. She agrees.

Chili’s first project as a new record mogul is to try to launch singing sensation Linda Moon (Christina Milian). The only people standing in Chili’s way are a corrupt record mogul (Harvey Keitel), her manager Raji (Vince Vaughn) and his muscle, Elliot Wilhelm (The Rock).

How different is the music business from the movie business? Will Chili fit in this time? Will he be able to help out Moon?

“Be Cool” is one of those comedies that looks good on paper but suffers from a lack of jokes.

What is its saving grace are some solid performances from Travolta and The Rock. Travolta is flawless in his return to the character and is excellent as the cool straight hitman to all the zany characters around him. One of those zany characters is The Rock’s flamboyant and sexually-confused thug. His performance is utterly hilarious as he makes fun of himself in so many ways. He is such a riot.

I also liked the performances from Cedric the Entertainer and rapper Andre 3000 who play characters who also have an invested interest in Moon. Cedric has such a strong presence and has the perfect way of blending comedy and serious in his character. His sidekick Andre is a trigger-happy thug who seems to be a little unbalanced.

The faults I had with the film were the extremely annoying and painful performance by Vince Vaughn and the utterly wasted performance from Uma Thurman. Vaughn’s whole character ruined so many things in this movie for me. As for Thurman, her role was so two-dimensional that a lot of the time I wondered why she was even in the film.

I also had some problems with following the plot and who was related to whom and what their interest was in either Moon or Edie’s indie record label. I also found myself missing Barry Sonnenfeld who directed the first film. His timing and style is deeply missed here.

As a whole I was disappointed in some respects with the sequel to the now classic 90’s comedy, “Get Shorty”.

So Says the Soothsayer



Dean Kish

Ten years after the hilariously sharp Get Shorty, Travolta is back as hitman-cum-mogul Chili Palmer for more. There's enough genuine humour here to keep us chucking, but an overcrowded cast and plot keep it from coming close to the original.

After a decade in movies, Chili needs a new challenge. He decides to break into the music business with gifted young singer Linda Moon (Milian), but he needs to buy her contract from a couple of music execs (Keitel and Vaughn), who are reluctant to let her go. Meanwhile, the widow (Thurman) of one of Chili's old friends is trying to salvage her troubled record label, while a gangsta music producer (Cedric) demands the cash she owes him.

Director Gray wastes no time launching into this convoluted story--there's no set-up at all, so we're off balance from the beginning. We never get the chance to develop any perspective on the events or any attachment to the characters. And there are a lot of characters, most of whom fall into the goofy pastiche category. Travolta is effortlessly cool as the calm at the centre of the storm. Thurman is cute and underused; her dance-floor reunion with Travolta is surprisingly anticlimactic. Vaughn is hilariously silly as the white guy who desperately wants to be black. Benjamin is unexpectedly funny as an inept thug. And the film's stolen by The Rock as a gay wannabe-actor bodyguard--a role that could have descended into offensive cliche, but turns out to be the film's true heart. His monolog from Bring it On is classic.

Despite the on-screen chaos, the film is nicely orchestrated by Gray. It looks superb, and he sustains a freewheeling comic tone that's buoyed with terrific throwaway jokes. Scenes are full of witty cameos and astute jabs at the music and movie industries, although some of the inside gags are laboured and corny (such as Travolta's opening anti-sequel speech). And the plot itself is a silly fantasy that goes for broad strokes where a more finely tuned satire might have actually hit a nerve. An enjoyable but mostly forgettable sequel.

Rich Cline

Disenchanted with the movie business, Chilli Palmer (Travolta) is thinking about going back to loan sharking when an opportunity for his unique expertise arises in the music industry. After seeing a young singer called Linda Moon (Milian) at a club, he decides to become her manager, much to the grievance of her current representatives Nick Carr (Keitel) and Raji (Vaughn). Taking her under his wing, Chilli introduces Linda to record label owner Edie Athens (Thurman) but getting Linda’s record deal up and running will mean that Chilli has to deal with the Russian mob, gangster rappers and hit men.

Ten years after we last saw John Travolta don the black suit and tell people to ‘Look at me’, he returns to the role of Chilli Palmer but does this sequel have what it takes to be considered cool?

Elmore Leonard’s follow up novel to ‘Get Shorty’ sees Chilli Palmer move from the movie business to the music industry only to find that his new preference is even more corrupt than the last one. As with the first film, the script tries to acquaint showbusiness to organised crime, with a gangster mentality but this time is pushes the fact that much more but it ends up falling into cliché.

The first movie had a certain amount of style and coolness that ‘Be Cool’ seems to be lacking. While the performances are good and the character of Chilli Palmer is still one of John Travolta’s best creations, the film seems more of a collection of set pieces, stereotypes and a forced finale that drains away all of the humour and clever witticisms of the first movie. In fact the film is just a very poor impression of the first movie, just replacing the film business with the music industry and filling it with the same type of characters.

Again we have dim-witted gangsters, this time protection racket running Russian mafia but they don’t have the class, comedic skill or presence of Dennis Farina. We also have an underachieving talent that needs a lucky break but Uma Thurman’s Edie, though looking gorgeous, is no Gene Hackman’s Harry Zimm. Even the chance of seeing John Travolta and her dancing together again doesn’t change the fact that the character is unoriginal. Cedric the Entertainer’s money lending gangster rappers are too stereotypical and not have the presence or menace of Delroy Lindo’s Bo Catlett. Harvey Keitel’s character is also like Lindo’s but again suffers from a lack of screen time to really give the character a chance. The only shining light is The Rock’s portrayal of a gay bodyguard with dreams of stardom. He steals the show and proves that there is more to his talent than just big muscles but even his character has similarities to James Gandolfini’s Bear from the first film.

There are some new types of characters but only Christina Millian’s Linda Moon is at all likeable. We all know that she is a talented singer and performer but here she shows that she is also a talented actress, playing a character that you cannot help but like. The same can’t be said about Vince Vaughn’s gangster rap wannabe Raji however. This character is funny during his first scene but after that, the act just gets tired and extremely annoying. How many more clichéd sayings and mannerisms can Vaughn repeat before you want to slap him and call him a b’atch?

‘Be Cool’ is more of a rehash than a continuation of the adventures of Chilli Palmer in showbusiness. This fact makes it almost criminal especially after watching the opening sequence where Chilli talks about how much he hates sequels and see them as cash-ins with no real artistic value. Irony or a joke at the watching audiences expense?

Jamie Kelwick

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