Movie Review: Be Cool

Be Cool is the most ironically named movie since What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Crass commercialism rarely exhibits any sign of the finesse, reserve, or hip theatricality inherent to modern definitions of cool. This flop is no exception.

In stirring attempts to stretch their acting muscles, The Rock plays a very feys openly homosexual man, Andre 3000 channels 50 Cent, Christina Milian is a sultry up-and-coming R&B star, Danny DeVito is a short, aging actor, Steven Tyler plays Steven Tyler, and John Travolta pretends that he does not increasingly resemble Steven Segal.

Be Cool, the lackluster sequel to Get Shorty—both based on titular novels written by Elmore Leonard—orbits around the galaxy of popular stars clustered by production company MGM. It would seem that they have strategically selected performers to appeal to the broadest range of audiences. For every racial and social minority—aging rockers, young R&B and rap fans, 70s movie fans, gay men, WWF fans/closeted gay men—there are a few good men towards whom they can gravitate. The problem with that strategy is the movie MGM saddled with that burden—the narrative can’t handle the truth.

A movie about “cool” needs a central figure that speaks slower than everyone else; as John Travolta notes in Be Cool: “If you’re important enough, they’ll wait for you.” Think Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or Travolta himself in Get Shorty.

But Travolta’s last performance as Chili Palmer was in a compact movie about a gangster from Brooklyn making his mark on Hollywood. In this sprawling sequel, Palmer decides to break into the music business by producing hot starlet Linda Moon (Milian). Unfortunately, she is under contract to unscrupulous sleazeballs played by Harvey Keitel and Vince Vaughn. In the process of becoming Moon’s manager, hilarity ensues. Or at least, it is supposed to.

Take, for example, the film’s showcase scene: Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing together in a direct nod to their iconic scene in Pulp Fiction, a movie whose success built off the relaxed rapport of its characters. Here, there is no charisma. It appears as though the actors are simply enjoying their paychecks and investing almost none of their acting passion in the scene. Eating that extra Happy Meal and killing Bill have tired out these once-sprightly performers, and the scene fails.

The novice performers overplay their roles with “look-Ma-I’m-actin’ glee,” while the veterans are simply badly directed. Keitel identifies part of the filmic problem when he yells Travolta that he can’t just come into the music business and expect everyone to fall all over themselves for this former wiseguy, because everyone in this business is a wiseguy.

Get Shorty thrives with its witty commentary on the contrast between the world of the gangsters and the Hollywood men who think themselves hip, a self-image that melts after contact with Chili’s genuine cool. But when everyone is a gangster there is no such contrast. The characters’ behavior quickly becomes an absurd oversimplification of music business stereotypes: women are sensual, blacks are gang members regardless of their lifestyles, Italians are smooth mobsters, Jews are only interested in money, and gay men are overtly feminine.

Many of the flaws can be attributed to the script, but not all. Director F. Gary Grey clearly developed The Rock’s characterization of Be Cool’s only homosexual as so flamboyant, he makes Elton John look like Ronald Reagan. Vince Vaughn outdoes Jamie Kennedy’s Malibu’s Most Wanted caricature as a confused Jewish hip-hopper who thinks he’s black. Thurman is a strong female executive, but still melts immediately in a strong masculine presence; her characters have had more integrity when overdosing on cocaine. This collective clamoring to be over-the-top suggests that perhaps the performers were somehow under pressure to be the most noticed and outshine the rest of the cast.

Even as the movie’s entirety is patently ridiculous, there is an individual on screen with a certain dedicated audience. Coming out of the theatre, I heard one girl announce to her friend, “I think this was definitely the worst movie The Rock has made yet.” She drives home the point that fans will approach the movie as a starring vehicle for their respective idols, making the questionable directorial choices a bit more reasonable: there needs to be scenes that satisfy each of the actors’ groupies. Problematically, that creates a chaotic movie in which even DeVito diehards will inevitably get the short shrift.

—Scoop A. Wasserstein