Be Cool, Very Cool

Because the feature movie BE COOL, for which this approximately 20 minute documentary was made as a DVD extra, is rather a drab affair itself that seems to have strayed a great deal from the effective satiric level of its predecessor, GET SHORTY, a film that also highlights the lead character in BE COOL, Chili Palmer (John Travolta), it cannot be surprising that a viewer's opinion of this short work will be one with that for the full-length picture that provides virtually nothing that might interest a sensate audience. This clearly is a puff piece for BE COOL, a consistently tedious essay at being a comedy that, not unexpectedly, has failed to gain a fan club, due to a convergence of evidence that the film is simply substandard in every manner. In this short, there are brief and not instructive interviews with several members of the cast, in addition to the director and several producers; tellingly, Elmore Leonard, author of the novel upon which the feature is based, does not appear here. That vigour lacking from the performances of BE COOL is absent as well in these interviews wherein a considerable amount of tired promoting is in evidence, although due process for it is wanting, as is sympathetic handling and photography. There is a generous amount of "special features" attached to this Home Entertainment disc, of which this documentary is one, all of which may be avoided by viewers to their advantage.