Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld)

Rating: 2.5

I can't quite put my finger on the reason that this film didn't quite 
work for me.  Oh, it'd be easy enough for me to compile a list of its 
shortcomings--foremost among them the presence of John Travolta, who 
continues to underwhelm me (though he's a damn sight better than the 
perpetually tedious Rene Russo)--but GET SHORTY's failure to gel is 
greater, I think, than the sum of its broken parts.  "Attitude plays a 
part," as the film's advertising campaign suggests, and this adaptation 
of Elmore Leonard's novel has the wrong attitude; the comedy is too 
broad, the narrative too sprawling, the editing too choppy; from the very 
first scene, it simply feels off in some vague, indefinable way.  
It does, however, have its moments, and I did laugh at many of the 
Hollywood in-jokes...though even these seemed pale and wan compared to 
the barbs and gags in Altman's THE PLAYER (Lyle Lovett chanting "One of 
us...one of us...one of us...," for example).  A pleasant diversion, but 
it left me feeling unsatisfied.  Terrific score by John Lurie.