PERHAPS it's tempting fate to call your film anything "cool", because boy is the egg on your face if the end result is anything but.

Sadly, that's the fate of this sequel to 1995's Get Shorty, which took a cool Elmore Leonard novel and turned it into an equally cool film starring a reinvigorated John Travolta, fresh from his triumph in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Result.

So why curse it with a vastly inferior sequel?

Travolta is back as loan shark Chili Palmer, who decides to turn his hand from movies to music when his mate James Woods is suddenly bumped off, leaving his company, Nothing to Lose Records, in the hands of his moll, Edie (Uma Thurman).

As the company's in a lot of debt, when Chili and Edie try to turn things around they discover that crooks from all over town - including Harvey Keitel, Vince Vaughn and Cedric the Entertainer - have a vested interest in what happens with the label.

But Chili's not a man to be messed with, and when he decides that he wants to sign singer/ songwriter Linda Moon (a bland Christina Milian) to rescue NTL's fortunes, he's determined to wrestle her contract away from Keitel and co despite being threatened, shot at and pursued by Russians.

While it's true that you couldn't get a much cooler cast for a film - on paper at least - given that The Rock, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Andre Benjamin from Outkast have small roles too, Be Cool is quite muddled and, if we're being brutally honest, a substantial disappointment.

It seems to be that no one except Quentin Tarantino can write a part for Uma, as she's left to flounder, albeit attractively, in a part which requires nothing more than some dizzy behaviour and a dance scene with the big JT.

And despite all director F Gary Gray's protestations that there was such a dance scene in the movie before Uma was cast, the reconciliation boogie to the Black Eyed Peas just comes over like a poor imitation of their finer work down Jack Rabbit Slim's diner.

Sadly, cool Chili Palmer has suddenly turned into a has-been, but, gee, maybe that's just me getting him mixed up with the has-been playing him. Fair enough, Mr Travolta was, once upon a time, the coolest thing since, well, just ever, but age has definitely withered him. When you add the fake tan and the suspect "hair", he's practically the movie equivalent of David Dickinson.

The sole impressive thing about this film - and I never thought I'd ever utter this - is The Rock. He's totally sincere and hilarious as the gay bodyguard with dreams of starring in a Hollywood film.

In fact, he's so surprisingly good that he's nearly worth the entrance price all by himself.

Get that man a proper (i.e. not The Scorpion King) motion picture to call his own!