CS Daily Archive > Weekend Read > 03/04/05

Leaves You Cool

By jeff goldsmith

Chili Palmer is back for a sequel -- rather than playing dirty in the film business, he sinks into the sleazy depths of the music industry. If only Chili arrived armed with a script, there might have been a good film somewhere in there.

Be Cool

Peter Steinfield
Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard

This sequel to 1995's Get Shorty only reminds us how well-written Scott Frank's script for the original truly was. Steinfield's Cool script is dead on arrival from its opening moments in which Chili Palmer (John Travolta) and his friend Tommy Athens (James Woods) discuss whether or not producing a film about Athens' life in the music industry would make a good film. Chili tosses about a few trite screenwriting terms in explaining why it wouldn't make a good film and guess what? He's right! Moments later, Russian mobsters show up and gun down Tommy; this gives Chili a quest (find out why Tommy was killed) as he gets into the music business and breaks a new artist -- and stepping into Tommy's boots and making that bad film he cautioned against.

There isn't enough room herein to describe how poorly written Be Cool is. Chili discovers the motive and guilty parties behind Tommy's murder nearly midway through the film, but for some reason, the story still isn't over as Steinfield tries desperately to toss in a bunch of random plot twists and double-crosses. The Big Sleep this is not, although you might fall asleep while watching it. But don't worry; you'll be awakened within moments because the filmmakers tossed in five songs (at three minutes each) performed by Linda Moon (Christina Milian), the singer whom Chili is trying to break. To offset these songs, there's also a two-minute dance sequence between Chili and love interest Edie Athens (Uma Thurman) that might remind you of the two actors' Pulp-ier days. Since the screenplay fails miserably to build or maintain the relationship between these two, we're given this screen time to ponder it and can finally see their serious physical attraction for each other while they dance.

To make matters worse, for a film called Be Cool, there's very little that's cool about the music. It's about as vacuous and bland as the screenplay and likewise completely lacks soul. In fact, the entire movie seems like a bad episode of American Idol, with the audience as the loser. Maybe that's because this is a PG-13 sequel to an R-rated film; rather than producing an engaging and mature film like they did the first time around, they decided to pander to the lowest common denominator seemingly based on rating alone. Sadly, the lame screenplay also robbed its principal characters by supplying Chili and Edie with nothing of real interest to do throughout the film, while the rest of the cast each have distinctly comedic moments. Both gay bodyguard Elliot Wilhelm (The Rock) and white-music-producer-who-thinks-he's-black Raji (Vince Vaughn) steal the show comedically, but that just isn't enough to make the film worth the price of admission.

Be Cool supplies a helluva cast and absolutely nothing else. If you want to be cool, go watch Get Shorty again and see Elmore Leonard get some respect.

Be Cool
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Rated PG-13; 104 min.

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Jeff Goldsmith is a regular columnist for Creative Screenwriting magazine and serves as the Los Angeles Events Coordinator in charge of the Creative Screenwriting screening series.

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