King and queen of ‘Cool’

For more than 25 years, following John Travolta’s career has been like sitting at the beach, watching the tides.

He crests with “Saturday Night Fever,” “Grease” and “Urban Cowboy,” then sinks with “Moment by Moment” and “Staying Alive.” He comes back on the high of “Pulp Fiction” and then collapses into the lows of “The General’s Daughter,” “Battlefield Earth” and “Basic.”

For every peak like “Face/Off” or “A Civil Action,” there are a dozen plumbing-the-depths disappointments like “The Punisher” or “A Love Song for Bobby Long.” But loyal Travolta fans know these things are cyclical, and they hunker down and wait for the tide to turn.

Their patience is rewarded in “Be Cool,” the sequel to 1995’s “Get Shorty” and Travolta’s best film in years – as well as a one-man summation (with occasional sidebars) of what it means to be an icon.

Travolta always has been a better actor than he was given credit for, but he is first and foremost a movie star. He quietly, insistently, compels you to watch, no matter what he’s doing; he improbably, simultaneously evokes both idealization and identification. That’s why he’s been a name brand for 30 years.

“Be Cool” is one of the good ones. Travolta reprises his role as Chili Palmer, East Coast wiseguy turned West Coast producer. As “Be Cool” opens, though, Palmer is getting tired of the movies. He wants to get into the record business.

And Palmer always gets what he wants – even when he has to contend with minor complications such as gangsta rappers, gangster businessmen, the Russian mob, the LAPD and the merry widow of a murdered former associate.

Although Travolta is back (as is Danny De Vito), the rest of the cast and crew have changed since the first film. That’s not always to the movie’s advantage.

Director F. Gary Gray, for example, while a capable action director, wastes too much time here on concert scenes.

There’s nothing here with the bounce of the original film.

Nor does screenwriter Peter Steinfeld’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s original story match Scott Frank’s script for “Get Shorty.” There’s too much awkward exposition, and the nudge-nudge gags about sequels are just indulgences.

But Travolta is here, slimmed down and sexy (and making smoking look criminally stylish). And so is a hilarious cast, including an awfully hungover-looking Vince Vaughn as a would-be white gangsta, The Rock as a gay Samoan bodyguard, and Harvey Keitel as a tough-as-nails label owner who’s as much a crook as Palmer was.

Travolta’s real co-star is Uma Thurman, and she’s fully capable of teaching a course in stardom herself. There’s nothing classically beautiful to her face; her nose is oddly shaped, her eyes are small and her forehead could sell advertising. Yet she holds your gaze, and when she gets on the dance floor with Travolta, suddenly it’s “Pulp Fiction II.”

Gray doesn’t make the most out of the scene with his camera; there are too many cuts and close-ups, and not enough long shots to show us bodies in full motion.

But middling as the photography is, we never stop looking at Thurman and Travolta, or delighting in this wordless – and, in terms of the plot, pointless – scene. They’re simply fun to watch. And that’s a sign of their real career, as movie stars.