So I wanted to see SOMETHING last night in an actual movie theater and when I showed up, BE COOL seemed like the best bet. I knew it was supposed to be BAD and had read nothing but bad reviews, but I just couldn’t stomach watching 2 hours of Vin Diesel babysitting kids. So I decided to see BE COOL anyway.

I wasn’t disappointed. It was BAD. 

The movie is supposedly a sequel to GET SHORTY, but it doesn’t feel like any relation to that movie. In fact, it makes GET SHORTY look absolutely brilliant. Former shylock Chili Palmer made it big in Hollywood, but now, because everyone in Hollywood is deceitful, he decides to leave it all behind and go back to working for mobsters. Then, a mob hit goes awry, Palmer meets a talented singer (Christina Milian) and sees Uma Thurman in a bikini. That’s all it takes for him to start pursuing a career in the music industry. Along the way, he pisses off a lot of shady characters including a rap group, a white guy who thinks he’s black and an out-of-place Harvey Keitel. Double crossings and back-stabbings fill up the rest of the movies running time before the film climaxes at an Aerosmith concert.

BE COOL is a mess. It feels like the film is just overloaded by the amount of B-listers and nobody really decided what direction the movie was going to take. So it wanders aimlessly through it’s overlong running time.

It reminded me a lot of OCEANS TWELVE where there are a bunch of famous actors on the job, but nobody seems concerned about making a movie that is entertaining or has any sense of actual tension or suspense. The characters in BE COOL are all cartoons and the good guys are in no danger whatsoever.

Travolta is so cheesy that it is actually hilarious. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler looks like somebody dusted off the Cryptkeeper puppet and dressed him up in gypsy clothes. It also looks like all of Tyler’s lines have been poorly re-dubbed.

Vince Vaughn gives one of his worst performances in years. His character is completely grating and doesn’t work as a villain at all. I was continually reminded of Gary Oldman’s great performance in TRUE ROMANCE and how he really brought a sense of menace whereas Vaughn is just an annoying clown.

If there’s one thing this movie has going for it, it’s the shimmering performance from Uma Thurman, who has obviously decided that she is in another movie and to hell with everything else that is going on. The much talked about dance sequence which reunites her with John Travolta, actually makes you forget what movie you’re watching for a few precious minutes. Also, as crass as this might sound, seeing Uma Thurman in a tiny bikini up on the big screen was a mind-blowing experience that actually made this worth the price of admission.

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Review by: Cinema Eye