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35
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34
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71
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70
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93
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27
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47
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93
WALL-E
82
Dark Knight, The
73
Kung Fu Panda
72
Ghost Town
71
Tropic Thunder
70
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
62
Burn After Reading
60
Traitor
58
Body of Lies
58
Express, The
58
Quarantine
57
City of Ember
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
57
Flash of Genius
55
House Bunny, The
54
Get Smart
53
Rocker, The
53
Lucky Ones, The
52
Longshots, The
51
Mamma Mia!
49
Family That Preys, The
47
Swing Vote
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
46
Lakeview Terrace
45
Blindness
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
43
Eagle Eye
41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
35
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
15
Disaster Movie
15
College
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

xx
All of Us
53
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57
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68
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68
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81
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55
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xx
Beer for My Horses
xx
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63
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56
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50
Breakfast with Scot
61
Brick Lane
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49
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47
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43
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41
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62
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85
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66
Elegy
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26
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63
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80
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84
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xx
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61
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xx
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66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
89
Man on Wire
86
Momma's Man
85
Edge of Heaven, The
84
Up the Yangtze
83
U2 3D
83
Trouble the Water
82
Tell No One
82
Happy-Go-Lucky
82
Frozen River
82
Rachel Getting Married
81
Ballast
80
Encounters at the End of the World
80
Moving Midway
79
Visitor, The
78
Last Mistress, The
76
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Obscene
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
72
Secret, A
72
Transsiberian
72
I Served the King of England
71
I.O.U.S. A
68
August Evening
68
Ashes of Time Redux
66
Elegy
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
65
Flow: For Love of Water
64
Fall, The
64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
63
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
63
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
63
Appaloosa
63
Man Named Pearl, A
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
62
Kabluey
62
Duchess, The
62
Mister Foe
62
Baghead
61
Wackness, The
61
Brick Lane
57
Towelhead
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
57
Sixty Six
57
RocknRolla
56
Bottle Shock
55
Save Me
55
Religulous
55
Battle in Seattle
55
Ping Pong Playa
53
Humboldt County
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
51
Good Dick
50
Breakfast with Scot
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
Nights and Weekends
47
Choke
45
Shoot on Sight
44
Henry Poole is Here
43
Choose Connor
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
37
Forever Strong
31
Hounddog
28
Fireproof
26
Everybody Wants to Be Italian
xx
Phoebe in Wonderland
xx
All of Us
xx
Whaledreamers
xx
W.
xx
Billy: The Early Years
xx
Call and Response
xx
Just Buried
xx
Beer for My Horses
xx
Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Be Cool
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corporation
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for violence, sensuality, and language including sexual references
Starring
John Travolta,
Uma Thurman,
Vince Vaughn,
Cedric the Entertainer, André 3000,
Steven Tyler, Christina Milian,
Harvey Keitel,
The Rock,
and
Danny DeVito
John Travolta is back as Chili Palmer in Be Cool, a sequel to the comedy smash Get Shorty. This time, Chili becomes a different kind of "hit" man -- he abandons the movie industry to bring his wiseguy skills and negotiation tactics to the music business. (MGM)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Crime
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Peter Steinfeld
Elmore Leonard (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
F. Gary Gray
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: June 7, 2005
Video: June 7, 2005
Theatrical: March 4, 2005
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
118 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
It's instantly forgettable, but smooth fun most of the way.

70
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Be Cool is not really cool as "Get Shorty" was, but it's entertaining, a frivolous cocktail rather than a vintage wine.

67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
John Travolta is nothing if not cool as Chili Palmer.

63
USA Today
Mike Clark
Despite a cast and production that seem to promise one of the year's first movies of any note, Cool never translates its promo-photo flashiness into authenticity on screen.

63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Even if you enjoyed the mean, funny 1995 John Travolta-Elmore Leonard crime comedy "Get Shorty"-and many of us did-this forced sequel isn't likely to help you repeat the experience.

60
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Rock is brave, fully invested in his character, and with a wide-open face and foolish grin, outrageously funny. It's a singular performance achieved without condescension or camp. Who'd a-thunk it?

60
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Be Cool more often evokes the image of a screenwriter furiously trying draft after draft to accommodate all the stars. Accommodating the audience becomes a distant priority.

58
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
The hell of it is, Be Cool is tepid entertainment that could be cool if it spent less time entertaining us as if we were demanding a definition of rhythm.

50
The New Yorker
David Denby
Considered as a sequel, Be Cool is not an insult, but it’s a lazy, rhythmless, and redundant piece of moviemaking.

50
Slate
David Edelstein
Travolta keeps you grooving even when the movie's motor runs down--although it has never revved too high to begin with.

50
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
It's a messy, overlong film, but it's impossible to take seriously and therefore more than a little entertaining.

50
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
Easily one of the most lackadaisical movies I've seen. Don't get me wrong, the plot is entertaining enough, and there are some genuine laughs, but almost everyone in the movie is half-a--ing it.

50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Lacks both a focus and an edge, making it an amorphous mess.

50
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
The author is not to blame. Published in 1999, "Be Cool" is hipper, cooler and better than "Get Shorty," but everything hipper, cooler and better about it is either missing from the film or camped-up beyond recognition.

50
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
A fairly painless, if not particularly stimulating, experience, Gray has no idea how to capitalize on the reunion of "Pulp Fiction" co-stars Travolta and Thurman.

50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
To reduce Leonard to shtick makes about as much sense as using a scalpel for a butter knife — even when the job gets done, it's just such a dull waste of a sharp implement.

50
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
In Be Cool, a wonderful cast essays a lively script and manages to make a decent film out of it.

40
New York Magazine
Ken Tucker
A hapless comedy that already seems about ten years out of date, Be Cool is a curious failure.

40
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Isn't assaultive or dumb, just slack and de-energized, as if its batteries start running down in the first frame.

40
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
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.

40
Empire
Olly Richards
A poorly written, directed and acted imitation of the first. Not funny, not clever and, crucially, not cool.

40
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
Like the characters, the scenes pile up but go nowhere; the story seems fragmented, the actors unmotivated, unmoored. Mr. Gray has a feel for pulp, but is seriously off his game here.

40
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
Redundant to the point of being absolutely pointless, a sequel that's almost a note-for-note, beat-for-beat redo of its predecessor, only with all the entertaining stuff left out.

38
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Recycling is a good idea in principle, but certain products should be sent directly to a landfill without re-use. Be Cool, the feeble film follow-up to "Get Shorty," is one of them.

38
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
A forced and wholly unnecessary sequel.

38
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
How to count the ways that Be Cool isn't? For one thing, it looks terrible: grainy, ill-lit, edited with blunt, rusty shears.

38
Premiere
Aaron Hillis
Blunderingly out-of-touch, star-studded embarrassment of a sequel.

38
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
A classic species of bore: a self-referential movie with no self to refer to. 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.

30
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Where there was effortless cool in the first movie, there is nothing but manufactured posing here.

30
Variety
David Rooney
A staggeringly flat sequel that trades filmdom for the music bizbiz and could hardly be less cool.

30
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Director F. Gary Gray doesn't have a clue about how to film this couple dancing, and Peter Steinfeld's crude script confuses character with shtick while racing us through a story where loyalties and motivations turn on a dime.

30
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
Although Travolta is as smooth as ever, the picture is a bust, a grimly unfunny comedy with no connection to reality, and worst of all, running on and on for two dismal hours.

30
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
The sweet nostalgia of Travolta and Thurman's reprise of their "Pulp FIiction" dance-floor flirtation cuts through a lot of rubbish, including the Black Eyed Peas' smutty "Sexy."

25
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
The overlong comedy has few laughs and flirts far too much with racist, homophobic humor. A waste of a fine cast.

25
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
You know a sequel isn't working when, ten minutes into the movie, a voice inside your head starts screaming, "Please make it stop!"

25
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Barely any of it is funny, and if a minute of it is meant in mockery, few of the darts ever find the board.

10
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Manages the dubious trick of being both execrable and boring.
0
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Be Cool proves that when "cool" evaporates all it leaves are embarrassing little puddles.


The average user rating for this movie is 3.8 (out of 10) based on 59 User Votes
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