Absolutely brilliant

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

You know what, I really love Elmore Leonard, and a part of me feels that nearly any movie made from his works is going to come out as fresh, original, and worth watching.This is the rare exception.Here they took a classic Elmore Leonard plot and made it too Hollywood for its own good. And then they tried a bit hard to make it too much like a Pulp Fiction film, but with less bleak comedy and more slapstick comedy.You still have Leonard's unique originality...but the story has been raped and what's left is trash.

Chili Palmer (John Travolta) a debt collector travels to L.A. to collect a debt, only to get involved in the film industry.I had missed this film when it came out and it has gone on to be an iconic "B" film crime comedy. The humor was crisp and well time. Travolta was great in the role and had a his pre-botox face on the screen most of time. A feel-good dark comedy and Golden Globe winner for Travolta.Guide: F-words. No sex or nudity.

Get Shorty has a pretty sweet set-up. A loanshark mobster named Chili Palmer (John Travolta) has to travel from Miami to Los Angeles in order to collect a debt for his new boss. There he finds out that the movie business doesn't really differ all that much from what he has done successfully all his life, and thus he decides to produce a movie while he's at it. Very nice idea. Just exaggerated enough that no one will take it too seriously and the jokes practically write themselves.Which makes it all the more baffling that I didn't really laugh while watching the film. I enjoyed its plot a lot, but its humour didn't connect with me at all. I enjoyed the suaveness of John Travolta and all his serious scenes a lot more than I enjoyed any of the jokes the script had him say every once in a while. And that's basically the movie in a nutshell. It has a really good cast of actors, all of them charismatic and able to play their characters to perfection, but the script doesn't give them all that much to work with, meaning that they're not all that funny. Perhaps this would have worked better as a drama film with a humorous undertone. More drama than comedy, whereas in this case it's the other way around.Then again, perhaps it's just me. I've heard a lot of people say that this is a really funny film, so it might just be that it's not my cup of tea. Wouldn't be the first time when it comes to comedies. And, as stated, the film works very well as a story about a mobster that decides to do Hollywood. The characters are interesting, the various plot twists are just convoluted enough and the plot has a good structure.All in all I have to rate the film as just slightly below average because for me it doesn't work as a comedy. Still, definitely worth a watch if you're more omnivorous when it comes to comedies, because even if the humour doesn't hit you, at least you'll get a pretty decent mobster film out of it.

A Miami loan shark ends up in Hollywood, hobnobbing with B movie personalities. Leonard, who has had a prolific and varied career, provides a script that is generally entertaining, but there are too many plot threads and it doesn't all come together as well as it does in the best comedies. The cast is terrific: Travolta is believable as a tough goon, Hackman is smooth as a producer of schlocky movies, Russo is sexy as an actress past her bimbo prime, and DeVito is a shallow movie star (and title supplier). However, it is Farina who steals the film in a hilarious performance as an insecure mobster who's always left holding the wrong end of the stick.