This is the sequel to GET SHORTY. Based on another book by Elmore Leonard, but this book was made after the GET SHORTY movie and with the idea that it would become a movie too. So this is a movie about sequels based on a book that was a sequel to a movie based on a book. Which means there’s all kinds of metapostmodernistical type business running around calling attention to itself. Hey, look at me, I’m a character in a sequel talking about how sequels are bad. Now I’m a character in a PG-13 movie talking about how if you say fuck twice you get an R.
(John Travolta, as badass loanshark turned movie producer Chili Palmer points this out and says, “You know what I have to say about that? Fuck that.” And if only he had repeated “fuck that” again for emphasis I guess he would’ve gotten the R and I could’ve seen this movie in a quiet theater full of adults and not a fuckin high school cafeteria. But that’s a subject for a separate rant.)
Anyway that’s kind of how GET SHORTY was though and most of it works here, it’s fun if not exactly a fresh new idea. There are a couple of fuck ups though where they got celebrities playing fictional characters who make references to trademarks of the actual celebrities, and that shit just doesn’t fly. The Rock for example keeps doing his famous eyebrow movement (oh jesus, I can’t believe there is even such a phrase as “famous eyebrow movement”), and that’s just not funny. That belongs in the scrap pile with the part in SCREAM 3 where some asshole tells Carrie Fisher she looks like Princess Leah. That’s not a joke, that’s a reference. Stop it kids.
Also, they got a scene where John Travolta and Uma Thurman dance together, and you’re supposed to be excited because remember, they danced together in PULP FICTION. But in PULP FICTION you were supposed to be excited because remember, he danced in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. I mean how many fuckin times we gonna get excited because the man dances? At some point it’s gonna occur to America that John Travolta’s a dancer. So by definition he ends up dancing at some point. It’s not really that big a fuckin deal, in my opinion. (more…)
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In Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of PSYCHO they tried to recreate Hitchcock’s filmatism, they had Joseph Stefano only slightly re-word his old script, they re-recorded Bernard Herrman’s score and made it sound basically the same. So the success or failure of this version mostly falls to the one element Hitchcock claimed to not give two shits about: the actors.
