Be Cool captures the tone and spirit of a wacky Elmore Leonard novel, and that's no small feat. And Vaughn alone is worth the price of admission.
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Like fellow writer Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard has made a nice little career out of creating wacky characters who live in sunny climes and get themselves involved with murders, squeeze-plays, con men, mobsters, small-time hoods, and assorted weirdoes.
"Be Cool" certainly isn't the first book written with a movie in mind, or even a star. But Leonard loosens his tie with this one and self-consciously plays with the whole notion of writing sequels. While it's been tough for filmmakers to capture the borderline absurdist tone of his books—which I don't think even Barry Sonnenfeld did with "Get Shorty," the first book-to-film to feature Chili Palmer—director F. Gary Gray and his all-star cast stick this one like a gymnast's landing.
The action picks up in L.A., where small-time loan shark Palmer (John Travolta) had carted his big-time attitude and gotten into the movie business, which, it amused him to discover, had much in common with the underworld he knew back in Miami. "Be Cool" opens the way so many Leonard stories do—with two characters having a lunch that's suddenly, even violently interrupted. In this case, a record producer (James Woods) who's trying to get Chili to make a film that would feature him and his story gets whacked by someone in the Russian mafia—someone with a hilariously bad toupee that keeps slipping and thwarting his aim.
And how cool is Chili? Well, he stands and calmly stares down the gunman. As the gunman takes aim at his head, Chili lights a cigarette. And as the gunman pulls the trigger and the only noise heard is a "click," Chili just watches as his would-be assassin takes off running. Now that's "cool" Chili Palmer style, and Travolta fits the part as comfortably as he did in "Get Shorty"—maybe even more so. Vinnie Barbarino was sweathog cool and Danny Zuko was greaser cool, but with Chili Palmer, Travolta gets the keys to the Ultra-Cool Club, where maybe Agent 007 is the only other member. As he glides effortlessly from scene to scene, Travolta is fun to watch, especially as everyone else around him tries so hard to be cool and fails miserably. Make that comically.
"Cool" Elmore Leonard style was illustrated in the opening moments, when Chili tells his friend that unless you want an "R" rating (as "Get Shorty" had), you can only use the F-word once. "Fuck that," Chili says. "I'm done"—meaning, in the context of the film's action, through with the movie business. But with that pun, Leonard also takes a playful swipe at movie ratings and settles into a PG-13 film. Quite literally, Chili and the rest of the "players" were "done" using the F-word. That bit of cleverness really sets the tone for a film that isn't afraid to rock the establishment and have fun with stereotypes at the risk of being branded politically insensitive, or even racist. Hip-hoppers and pimp-walkers especially get the rotisserie treatment, and there are plenty of irreverent lines. When cops ask Chili to confirm that his friend was shot by the gunman, Chili responds, "Stevie Wonder could confirm that." The humor in "Be Cool" is much broader and wacked-out than in "Get Shorty," and people are either going to appreciate that or be turned off by it. I found it not necessarily a great film, but a film that was great fun to watch.
There are a lot of nice little touches and gags. When Chili pays a visit to his Edie Athens (Uma Thurman), his friend's widow, a friend of Edie's shows up with pizza and a funereal urn on top of the box. That kind of irreverence runs through the film like a jazz riff, and the offbeat characters take turns doing comic solos.
As bored as I was with Vince Vaughn's character in "Dodgeball," you can sign me up for his "Be Cool" fan club. Vaughn is stand-out hilarious and full of spitfire energy as a wimpy-white wannabe-black record producer who dresses and acts like a pimp. Playing off of him is The Rock as a gay Samoan bodyguard who's hoping to parlay his one eyebrow-raising expression into an acting or performing career. But Elliot has a little problem with his manhood, as demonstrated by his music video (where he croons, in falsetto, "You Ain't Woman Enough To Take My Man") and his audition for Chili (where he does a laugh-out-loud funny "monologue" of two cheerleaders from "Bring it On").
Cedric the Entertainer also gets a funny riff or two as Sin LaSalle, a hip-hop record mogul who is accompanied by his WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) in their matching black Hummers. It's Tony Soprano flashback time when the WMDs bring a tied-up DJ to his home and he's ready to whack him, bathrobe and everything, until his daughter comes outside and the whole gang waves and smiles sweetly—after which Sin just takes a breakfast spatula to him instead. Sin also has a comic sidekick, a trigger-happy bundle of nerves and social faux pas (André 3000, from Outkast, as Dabu). Steven Tyer of Aerosmith even makes an appearance and generates a few poke-fun-at-himself-and-the-industry laughs. There are also plenty of cool cameos, including Woods as Tommy Athens, Danny DeVito as Martin Weir, Wyclef Jean, Anna Nicole Smith, and Sergio Mendes.
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[release]15813[/release]