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A much older John Travolta can hardly recreate the magic of Saturday Night Fever, writes Ervell E. Menezes Remember John Travolta as the street-wise mobster who becomes movie producer in Get Shorty about a decade ago ? This time he abandons the fickle movie industry and tries his hand in the music business. But the idea loses its freshness, the star is much, much older (light years after he was that walking, talking, dancing super hero of Saturday Night Fever). And the film covers so much ground it almost loses its way, even if it goes by the title Be Cool. As Chili Palmer, Travolta is but a shadow of the original. To start with, his pal Tommy Athens ( James Woods) is bumped off. So he has to cultivate his widow Edie (Uma Thurman), to get his protégé Linda Moon ( Christina Milian) into the music business. That Edie seems to take her husband’s death well gives the film some bright moments, but if you think the dance with Chili is anything like the dances he’s been famous for you have another think coming. There are a plethora of characters one has to encounter, from the ageing Nick Carr (Harvey Keitel), to the bodyguard ( The Rock) and Cedric the Entertainer to mention only a few. There’s a good little speech of how the Blacks have enriched, "the very existence of the White Americans", by Cedric the Entertainer but these are only rare flashes in an otherwise humdrum screenplay by Peter Steinfeld. Director F Gary Gray limbers through so much stuff in all of 115 minutes that the viewer is left quite confounded about the direction the film is taking. His face quite bloated, Travolta is unable to evoke more than a passing interest in the audience, and though Thurman has much more zing, they form a mismatched pair. The result is that the viewer has to move from one lacklustre incident to another and the fare becomes purely anecdotal. In an attempt to induce excitement, there are some ruthless killings but they only have the opposite effect. From time to time Chili has to defuse some loud-mouth bullies to give Linda Moon a shot of the action and though she does display some promise it isn’t something to bring the house down. In fact Be Cool is far too cool, it almost gets frozen in time and is yet another example of Hollywood waiting, wanting to flog a dead horse. Maybe Travolta needs another comeback after Pulp Fiction. Also, it is only too well known that big (sorry, medium) names don’t necessarily lift a film’s worth. So Harvey Keitel, Danny DeVito, James Woods and The Rock do not really add up to much. May be Uma Thurman could
be the best selling point, but not even she is reason enough to suffer
through Be Cool. |
