Social Icons

Be Cool (2005)



Be Cool (2005)



7/10



Starring
John Travolta
Uma Thurman
Vince Vaughn
Cedric the Entertainer
Harvey Keitel
Christina Milian
Andre Benjamin
Dwayne Johnson


Directed by F. Gary Gary


It’s not every day you get to have a movie that you believe is cool, even if everyone else may beg to differ. Be Cool is extremely funny, and the movie’s inside gags are what cracked me up the most. I noticed them as the movie progressed, and thanks to Wikipedia, I’ve listed them below.

The movie is a crime comedy adapted from Elmore Leonard’s 1999 novel of the same name. If you recall, Danny DeVito was in the prequel to this movie, which was also an adaptation of Leonard’s 1990 novel Get Shorty—the same name as the 1995 movie.

Get Shorty showed Chili Palmer’s life when he decided to go into the movie-making business. Here, in Be Cool, Palmer decides to switch to the music business. The switch would have been smooth, but you know Palmer from Get Shorty—Palmer wants, Palmer gets, regardless of who’s in the way.

The movie features enough stars, just like the first one, and it doesn’t just splatter them all over the screen. Director F. Gary Gray made sure they all got enough time to deliver their part in making a great movie.

I love this movie and have seen it quite a number of times, laughing my head off every time. The acting is top-notch, the comedy is well-delivered, and the music… For me, the makers didn’t have to completely focus on that, but they did—the music was off the hook, especially the Aerosmith and Christina Milian duet.

Be Cool’s Inside Gags:

  • At the beginning of the film, Chili sees an advertisement for Get Lost, which is the sequel to Get Leo—the film within a film he produced in Get Shorty. He expresses his distaste for sequels, as well as his dissatisfaction in failing to prevent Get Lost from being made, despite the fact that he himself is a character in a sequel. The first line of the movie is Chili disgustedly dismissing the advertisement.
  • Tommy proposes the idea of making a movie about a young singer who wants to make it big with the help of a record mogul. This becomes the main plot of the film. Almost every factor Tommy mentioned in his pitch, such as gangsta rappers and the Russian Mafia, ends up happening in the film.
  • Chili is asked by Marla, the FBI agent, about his meeting with Tommy. He replies, "I know what you're getting, Marla. You think that I set this up. But the truth is, he wants me to make a movie about him. How can we make a movie when the main character gets popped in the first scene?" The detective replies, "Yeah, not a bad opening." Tommy responds, "Yeah, you're right. You know, that worked for American Beauty." The detective and Marla reply, "Sunset Boulevard." "Or Casino." Well, Tommy was shot early in the movie, if not the first scene.
  • When the idea is brought up to Steven Tyler, he vehemently rejects the possibility of being in a film and declares that he is not one of those singers who does bit-part cameos in films—despite the fact that that’s exactly what he’s doing in this film.
  • The one time the word "fuck" is used in the film is in talking about the MPAA's policy that the curse word can only be used once without censorship in a PG-13 film without bumping the rating up to R. Be Cool uses that word only once, in the first scene: "Do you know that unless you're willing to use the R rating, you can only say the F-word once? You know what I say: Fuck that. I'm done." For the rest of the film, several characters come close to using this cuss word but are cut off or censored in some way before they can.
  • The dancing scene between John Travolta and Uma Thurman is reminiscent of the one they portrayed in Pulp Fiction.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Disclaimer

All images featured on this site are the property of their respective copyright owners. They are used solely for illustrative and commentary purposes under fair use principles. This site is a personal blog, unaffiliated with or endorsed by any copyright holders. If you are the copyright owner of an image featured here and wish to have it removed, please contact me directly, and I will address your request promptly.