I just saw "Be Cool" (Spoilers....but then, the film is already Spoiled!)

Cafe Society
#1

Deja vu… I feel like I saw this movie ten years ago. It was about a wise guy shilock who gets into a new business and runs afoul of wannabe and big-tim organized crime groups.

YEESH! This movie was a stinker. I LOVED Get Shorty. Top ten all-time favorites. It was so hip. So smart. Played perfectly.

This movie had no point. There were even identical scenes from the first film (Uma and Chilli in waking up in bed. Impressing Martin Weir with a car. Some one ratting out Chilli to a gangster on the phone.)

And some of the new characters were just stand ins for those from the first film: The Rock was the new “Bear”, Vaughn was “Ronny” and Keitel was sort of Delroy Lindo’s character (though Vaughn played part of that as well). Cedric was so good, he took two parts; part Ray Barbones, part Columbian Drug Lord.

My wife and I started laughing about the duplications after a while. It would be a great drinking game to take a drink every time this film so obviously aped the first.

Should this screenwriter have gotten credit for “writing” this film? He just spliced a little Yo MTV Raps into the script of Get Shorty!

Unfortunately, there was something interesting that went to waste. Wouldn’t you have LOVED to see a non-Get Shorty movie that focused on Cedric the Entertainer’s posse in a contract war with Keitel, Vaughn and the Rock? Chilli Palmer’s presence in the film was unneccessay.

This sequel was the most contrived, derivative spinoff I have ever seen. Definitely the biggest drop in quality between a film and its successor (in part because the first was so good).

The only things that kept the film from getting the dreaded one star on my Netflix rating were the performances of Cedric the Entertainer (and his sidekick who I think to be Andre 3000) and the Rock. Big Bad Voodoo Lou has always said to me that the Rock had the chops. I sort of agreed, but this performance made me a fan. He is a solid actor. And Cedric stole the show (though the show was not a sellout…)

Overall, if you have two hours, just pop in the original. You’ll get largely the same picture, but it won’t be blurry; as carbon copies tend to be…

#2

I think giving it a 1 is generous.

Ed Wood didn’t create movies that unwatchable and self derivative.

#3

Wil, you know how much I was looking forward to this, since I loved Get Shorty too. I saw Ben Cool in the theater, and I agree it was derivative, pointless, and just not good. I thought The Rock, Vaughn, Cedric, and Andre 3000 were all very good, and I agree I would have preferred to see them playing the same characters in a different movie. I couldn’t care less about Chili Palmer in this movie after liking him so much in Get Shorty, and I especially couldn’t get into Uma and her struggles in the music business. I also didn’t like the obvious “commercials” for the Black Eyed Peas and Aerosmith, but I’m not a big fan of either band to begin with.

#4

That sad thing is, though Travolta has gone WAY down hill since the 90’s. This performance wasn’t bad. It wasn’t Chilli Palmer, per se, that ruined the film. It was the fact that writers didn’t give him anything NEW to say!

Uma added nothing to the film other than to show that she has an INCREDIBLE body!

Overall, the film felt more like a remake than a sequel…

#5

I just saw it a couple nights ago. I pretty much agree with the OP’s assessment, especially about the repetition. Still I thought there were some enjoyable parts but thinking back they all seemed to involve Cedric, Andre or the Rock. I think the only reason for the dance scene was so they could recreate a little of the Pulp Fiction magic.

#6

Watched it a couple of nights ago. yawn. Ironic that they dwell on the fact that the movie sequel was pretty craptastic.

#7

At first I thought they were going to be like Jamie Kennedy in Scream 2. Assessing all the flaws of the sequel all the way through the film.

Mercifully, they got that out of their system.

The “f-word” joke, though predictable, was KINDA funny…