:: Life on Planet Dan-E ::

:: Saturday, March 12, 2005 ::

:: (Trying WAY to hard to) Be Cool. ::

I finally got around to seeing "Be Cool" last night, and most of my thoughts towards it are similar to what I thought of "Blade: Trinity" when I saw it at the end of last quaerter: Mildy entertaining with some good points but I was more entertained than I should have been since I was so tired.

John Travolta is Chili Palmer incarnate but he seems to be snoozing through that role whereas he seemed to relish it in "Get Shorty." Uma Thurman was good but again, not much of an interesting character. Vince Vaughn was hilarious playing the obnoxious "whiggger" though I was laughing more at him than with him, which I think was the point. Harvey Keitel was ok, and the whole "Dub-M-Ds" posse was amusing but the movie really belonged to Dwayne Johnson a.k.a. The Rock.

He stole the show every time he was on the screen and perfectly portrayed a character that could have gone either over the top or bordered on bad parody. He even makes fun of his own eyebrow raising thing. He's a far better actor than I would have ever thought he could be.

But what sank it was that the movie just tries way too hard to, uh, be cool. The parade of celebrities was fine but it's a little too "wink wink nudge nudge" for it's own good. As if it's implying that the audience is too dumb to get it.

It also falls back too much on it's "Pulp Fiction" references. It only goes there two or three times but that's still too much, and the dance scene in "Be Cool" only serves to remind us that the one in "Pulp" is far more energetic and erotic as well as that Travolta and Uma have much better chemistry as well.

The "Cadillac of ..." joke was funny in "Get Shorty" but here it just seems trite. For a movie set in LA, I thought there could have been more done with the locations, although the "Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles" reference was great.

Still it was entertaining. The scene with Aerosmith was awesome. The Rock stole the movie. Most of the material stayed faithful to the book. That was actually my biggest fear, that the changes to the details would detract from my enjoying the movie. Now the book was far better, as books usually tend to be but the spirit of the book was mostly intact. Despite its self-conciousness, there were plenty of entertaining moments that'll incite laughter. There are worse ways to spend two hours of your life.

:: Miscellaneous Ramblings by Dan-E at 5:36 PM [+] :: | 0 comments
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