Be Cool: Critic Reviews

Tepid entertainment.

John Travolta returns as the reformed mobster he played in Get Shorty. But while Get Shorty rode the Pulp Fiction craze with finesse, Be Cool is running on empty.

It's kind of -- hmmmm, less than good, a little better than not bad, almost all right, mediocre without being grating, sort of in the C-minus-to-C-minus-minus range.

Perfect testament to what Hollywood does best: turn entertaining originals into dull sausage meat.

What was keenly ridiculous in print seems clueless and uncouth onscreen now. Gray embraces the inanities Leonard seemed to be lampooning.

F. Gary Gray seems a clueless bystander, watching the new machine attempt to clone the earlier model's rhythms, gestures, and confidence, but never knowing which switches to flip.

The book's various thugs, pistol-waving gangstas and Russian mafia are so cartoonishly portrayed they're about as scary as members of the Wile E. Coyote Fan Club.

There's really no need to pay much attention to the plot.

Nothing is more uncool than trying too hard.

It can't decide if it's a comedy or a musical -- rocking ballads by Milian and a duet with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler are sweet interludes but ruinous to any sense of paced humor.

A lazy, rhythmless, and redundant piece of moviemaking.

One character after another, one scene after another, one cute line of dialogue after another, refers to another movie, a similar character, a contrasting image, or whatever. The movie is like a bureaucrat who keeps sending you to another office.

A bright, colorful misfire.

I was really glad when it was over.

Represents the mind-numbing antithesis of cool.

The only worse thing than starring in a bad movie is using it to call up memories of a time when you were terrific. That's not cool at all.

The film's one redeeming quality may be its eventual use as a thesis subject for some would-be Phd ('Be Cool: Deconstructing Hollywood at its Worst'). But that will be little consolation for anyone who wastes nine bucks on a ticket for this movie.

Even Travolta seems disinterested in this bloated sequel, which revisits all the old gags but doesn't possess a tenth of the energy found in the original.

[A] very marginal misfire.

There's an excess of corn, confusion and chaos in Be Cool, but not much of anything you could call comedy.

Utterly forgettable -- and, yes, utterly uncool.

It's unchallenging but amusing enough.

Like being spritzed by a bottle of stale seltzer.

If you're looking for a primer on the worst ways to adapt an Elmore Leonard novel, look no further.