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But Christopher Lyon (Plugged In) did not have a good time. "After 10 years, you've got to wonder who was asking for this sequel. After two hours, viewers will be wondering why they asked for a ticket. Be Cool is the perfect triple threat: stupid, boring and offensive. It's the whole package."

Annabelle Robertson (Crosswalk) says, "The main message in the film is that the music industry is full of gangsters—like that's a revelation. Everyone is pursuing their dream, and they aren't afraid to shoot someone else—or sleep with their best friend's widow—to get it. Pretty sordid stuff, especially when you add the overwhelming number of profanities and obscenities and a lot of shoot-em-dead violence."

Frederica Matthewes-Green (The National Review) is a fan of Get Shorty, but not its sequel. "Every once in awhile a comedy comes along that is bright and quirky enough that it lingers companionably in the mind a long time after. Get Shorty was one of those movies; the first time I saw it, I spent the ending credits wearing a big grin, thinking back over delicious scenes and wishing I could see more of those characters. Be Cool is a sequel that took ten years in coming, and now the reverse seems to be true: The characters are brassy, loud, and shallow, and there is a lot more of them on display than you really want to see."

Be Cool is leaving most mainstream critics cold.

Andrew Coffin (World) says, "Chili begins the film talking about the artistic sacrifices involved in making a sequel, something to which his character has just acquiesced. For a movie so concerned with the calamitous plight of such bottom-line-driven projects, Be Cool is remarkably bad. Or is that part of the joke? That doesn't make the film any funnier, but for the sake of everyone involved, I hope it's true."

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