Review of Be Cool (2005) by Heather K — 14 Jul 2009

The only reason I propped up Be Cool with a 60% is because of my undying love for Aerosmith, and I'll give any movie a positive for employing them or their music (witness my positive rating for Armageddon). I wouldn't normally like the mashup they do with the young female singer, but it's actually pretty good (despite the self-indulgent cutaways to Uma Thurman and John Travolta at several points in the concert performance).

As for the movie itself, it is definitely a step back from Get Shorty. It's almost not even a sequel except for the overarching Travolta character (Chili Palmer). Harvey Keitel is mildly wasted, and Vince Vaughan is nerve-gratingly terrible. I like the Rock and I think he did pretty good with a tongue-in-cheek role as an effeminate bodyguard (though he's essentially just the same character that James Gandolfini played in Get Shorty, and every other bodyguard-for-the-bad-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold). Uma Thurman is there to look hot and doesn't really add or detract from the movie. Cedric the Entertainer is pretty good in a few of his parts, though he's way too serious at times. Travolta is the same as he was in Get Shorty, but he seems to be a little too worshipful of his music protege, and he even butchers the meaning of Aerosmith's Sweet Emotion (which Steven Tyler inexplicably allows).

Be Cool is nowhere near as good as Get Shorty, and while the plot twists just as much, it's not as satisfying a conclusion as Get Shorty had (and actually you probably won't care when you get to the end anyway). I'm hard-pressed to recommend it to anyone except people like me who are shameless Aerosmith hounds. It's not as terrible, though, as a lot of people thought. It's just extremely inconsistent. It can be smooth and charismatic at times, annoying and cloying at others. Without Aerosmith, I'd probably vote it down to 40-50%.