26 Nov Be Cool (2005)

Acting Cool

We are born into the doom of being actors. If we are lucky we discover who we are but until then we go through a process of acting a role.

Some movies play with this idea, and “Get Shorty” was one of the most clever of these.

It had two elements: that notion of acting cool and the explicit self-reference of putting it in movies, complete with the command to “look at me.”

Behind it was one of the coolest thinkers in cinema, Danny Devito who is a kind of patron saint of self-reference. He who made a film based on “Pale Fire” and whose “Death to Smoochy” is a pinnacle of sorts of introspective writing.

Now comes this, which starts out okay, along the same lines of heavy self-reference until we learn that Devito is to star in a biopic of Johnny Cash.

Then the grind of the inferior mind behind it begins.

Seems they had some idea that Uma Thurman fit into an intelligent enterprise somewhere.

Nope, none of the few things she can do fit into self-reference or folding in any way.

Seems they decided that a mere reference to performance wasn’t enough, we had to have the whole pretty-girl-overcomes-adversity thing complete with several performances.

Nope, again.

And they figured that all the cool identity stuff would be carried by a white guy acting black and a black guy acting white.

Nope, nope , nope.

Go watch any Devito-inspired project rather than this.

Posted in 2005

Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

IMDB