|

Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

67
$9.99
75
24 City
66
Adoration
74
Afghan Star
48
Alien Trespass
56
American Violet
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57
Away We Go
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
62
Big Man Japan
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55
Brothers Bloom, The
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx
Call of the Wild
63
Cheri
62
Cherry Blossoms
63
Dead Snow
65
Departures
18
Downloading Nancy
58
Easy Virtue
70
End of the Line, The
77
Every Little Step
64
Examined Life
80
Food, Inc.
38
Gigantic
56
Girl from Monaco, The
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
87
Gomorrah
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Great Buck Howard, The
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx
Home
82
Hunger
91
Hurt Locker, The
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
81
Il Divo
54
Is Anybody There?
71
Jerichow
58
Julia
74
Lemon Tree
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
40
Limits of Control, The
42
Little Ashes
64
Lymelife
50
Management
57
Merry Gentleman, The
66
Moon
35
New York
62
Not Forgotten
xx
Offshore
78
O'Horten
64
Outrage
40
Paris 36
54
Pontypool
71
Pressure Cooker
52
Quiet Chaos
83
Revanche
67
Rudo y Cursi
86
Seraphine
65
Sex Positive
70
Shall We Kiss?
77
Sin Nombre
59
Sleep Dealer
74
Song of Sparrows, The
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
82
Sugar
84
Summer Hours
61
Sunshine Cleaning
28
Surveillance
42
Tennessee
63
Tetro
64
Throw Down Your Heart
80
Tokyo Sonata
63
Tokyo!
70
Tony Manero
74
Treeless Mountain
88
Tulpan
74
Two Lovers
83
Tyson
83
U2 3D
60
Under Our Skin
69
Unmistaken Child
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
22
What Goes Up
45
Whatever Works
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
91
Hurt Locker, The
89
Goodbye Solo
88
Tulpan
87
Gomorrah
86
Seraphine
84
Summer Hours
83
U2 3D
83
Revanche
83
Tyson
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
Sugar
82
Hunger
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
81
Il Divo
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
80
Food, Inc.
80
Tokyo Sonata
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
O'Horten
77
Every Little Step
77
Sin Nombre
75
24 City
74
Treeless Mountain
74
Afghan Star
74
Two Lovers
74
Song of Sparrows, The
74
Lemon Tree
71
Pressure Cooker
71
Jerichow
70
Shall We Kiss?
70
Tony Manero
70
End of the Line, The
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
69
Unmistaken Child
67
$9.99
67
Rudo y Cursi
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
Departures
64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
Lymelife
63
Tokyo!
63
Cheri
63
Dead Snow
63
Tetro
63
Great Buck Howard, The
62
Cherry Blossoms
62
Big Man Japan
62
Not Forgotten
61
Sunshine Cleaning
60
Under Our Skin
59
Sleep Dealer
58
Julia
58
Easy Virtue
57
Away We Go
57
Merry Gentleman, The
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
56
Girl from Monaco, The
56
American Violet
55
Brothers Bloom, The
54
Is Anybody There?
54
Pontypool
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
52
Quiet Chaos
50
Management
48
Alien Trespass
45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
Tennessee
40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
Downloading Nancy
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
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 61 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Read more user comments...
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|