Somewhere among the Hollywood A-list stars, faux music videos and stereotypical jokes lies the movie "Be Cool."
And that's about all viewers get from this movie - the chance to dish out cash to see a parade of familiar faces pretending to have some sort of relationship in something that resembles an intelligent comedy.
Heck, even Kobe Bryant, Fred Durst and Steven Tyler somehow stumble across the screen.
Apparently the producers of this film learned nothing from "Ocean's Twelve;" getting the most talent available on the screen doesn't always equate to enjoyment for the audience.
"Be Cool" is the sequel to the largely popular 1995 release "Get Shorty," in which John Travolta plays Chili Palmer, a loan shark who gets into the film industry for a change of scenery. Ten years later, with "Be Cool," Palmer decides the movies have grown tiresome, and now he's ready to go into the music business.
Palmer is partnered up with Edie Athens (Uma Thurman), who owns a small record label and helps Palmer get his foot in the industry door. Maybe this combination was done in hopes of reviving the chemistry the two had in "Pulp Fiction," or maybe Julia Roberts was too busy filming "Ocean's Twelve." Director F. Gary Gray even throws in the obligatory dance scene, eerily similar to the one Quentin Tarantino made so interesting to watch with seemingly little effort. But that's the one place where Gray fails. His dance scene, as well as the relationship between the two characters, is a mere revival of something that's been done already, instead of something new.
Palmer and Athens stumble upon Linda Moon (Christina Milian), a talented singer who's bottled up under a bad contract with a major record label owned by Nick Carr (Harvey Keitel). Moon has an exceptionally wonderful voice, but the audience is reminded of that far too often, leaving viewers to wonder if "Be Cool" is actually a musical in disguise.
Palmer's job is getting Moon's contract away from her label, as well as her manager Raji (Vince Vaughn) - who's white but thinks he's black - and his gay bodyguard Elliot Wilhelm (The Rock).
Raji is sure to become the Jar-Jar Binks of this decade. The initial banter between Raji (who can best be described as a bad mixture of Vanilla Ice and Flavor Flav rolled into one) and the other characters is humorous, but after a while becomes very tiresome. Similar to Moon's vocal solos, Raji's time on screen could have been reduced by about 20 minutes and with the same effect.
Some of the best moments come from the actors who probably cost less to pay than Travolta's plastic surgeon to be sure his hair plugs were on straight. The Rock, Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 of Outkast) and Cedric The Entertainer deliver some of the better performances that keep the story from driving straight off a cliff into the valley of all that is bad sequels.
Perhaps no actor could have saved this movie from driving over that metaphorical edge. The plot travels with the characters loosely through the film and is often a side note to the spectacle of stars on the screen who are trying to develop as characters. And those characters don't establish much either in the form of relationships, going more along the lines of character A knows character B, who is being pestered by character C and so on.
If you enjoy watching award shows just to see the movie stars smile for the cameras, then "Be Cool" is something certainly worthy of opening your wallet. But, if you're expecting an enjoyable story with humorous characters, then you'll have to find a way to keep from being slightly irritated. Or in other words, you'll just have to be cool.
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