Be Cool

I’m sure sucking down the large money they offer to you for bringing your books to the big screen is much easier than writing the things in the first place, but damn, Elmore Leonard! One more like Be Cool and all your cred is gone.

Be Cool confabulates the notion that the Hollywood entertainment industry is a crime-ridden, talentless cess-pool swirling with who-you-know-or-who-you-can-snow deals. So what if it’s true, if you can’t even make an entertaining movie of it maybe it’s time for us to go back to telling stories 'round the campfire.

Recounting the plot would be desperately stupid, but touting the few highlights and numerous lows might be fun. Highs one and two, actually the only highs, are Vince Vaughan and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as a clueless and desperate to be ‘Black’ record exec and his gay cowboy bodyguard. If Be Cool were all about those two it might be uncomfortably hilarious, but sadly the main plot thrust recounts legendary shylock (look it up) Chilli Palmer’s attempts to break bland Linda Moon into the music business - with the help of Uma ‘Coasting-on-fumes-for-basically-my-entire-career’ Thurman.

As Vaughan and Rock generate some warmth with semi-edgy but totally goofy shenanagins, Travolta plays a variant on his only true role, the cool guy he thinks he really is (sorry Ellen). His slick calm bores the hell out of me, but it’s at least nice to watch him assimilate then control any stupid situation he happens into. Then it happens: John and Uma dance.

Seeing these two dance together in a movie holds the same type of surprise one gets when pausing to see why a transient is leaning into the bushes, but in the cloddish hands of McG or whatever idiot directed this, even this scene is mishandled. Energetic, flashy cuts and close ups render what should be only a nauseating sequence into one that is also excruciatingly painful.

It’s one of at least three full-length music videos clogging up the overlong movie,but is nowhere near as crushing as the Aerosmith concert during which LInda Moon (even the name makes me ralph) reaches the stratosphere through a duet with Steven Tyler.

Aerosmith ruins nearly every movie it’s involved with.

Be Cool is not worth your time or energy, which is too bad because it looks like there is the core of something good there, even if it’s just a sequel starring only Vaughan and The Rock.

DVD Extras

Extras on the disk put the final nail in the coffin. At least the gag-reel does. The gag-reel is the saving grace of many a poor movie, but Be Cool gets even this wrong. The version viewers are assaulted with is very close to another full -length music video, consisting mostly of tedious footage of the actors dancing or grooving, tightly edited to innocuos tunes. Definitely not cool.