In the first scene of "Be Cool," Chili Palmer is talking about how much he hates himself for producing a sequel to his hip hit movie "Get Lost." Coming as it does at the beginning of the sequel to "Get Shorty," the hip hit movie from 1995, the line is playfully self-referential and charmingly ironic.

It's also a whole lot funnier then than it would be if he said it two hours later. By then, "Be Cool" has made you despise sequels, and even dislike Chili Palmer (or John Travolta, take your pick) for selling himself - and us - out with this unfunny and incoherent contrivance.

To say that "Be Cool" lacks the snap of the original confection is to greatly understate what a limp biscuit this cookie-cutter sequel is. Again and again, "Be Cool" follows the form of the original, but always to diminishing effect. Retelling a joke doesn't make it twice as funny, just twice as tired, which is painfully evident when Chili repeats the sucker-punch trick that helped set the tone for "Shorty." This time he pops a Russian mobster, but instead of doing it and leaving - the trademark Chili powder of the first movie - the scene is allowed to drag on and on.

In this movie, Chili has grown so disenchanted with the duplicity of the movie business that he's thinking of going back to shylocking for the mob. He lays this out in the opening sequence to a record hustler (played by James Woods) while driving down Sunset Boulevard. The scene is flaccid, and Travolta brings so little energy to it, it's hard to tell whether it's Chili who's depressed about being in the movies, or Travolta who's bummed about being in this one.

Unlike the original Chili, who was cool, this time the character seems sullen and out of sorts, as if having to actually make the movie, instead of just collecting the paycheck, were a downer. When Chili said "Look at me" in "Get Shorty," the command trailed your natural impulse. Why would you look anywhere else but into Travolta's electric eyes? But when he says it in "Be Cool," he sounds like a beleaguered soccer mom trying to get the attention of a small child. Look at me!

Even more depressing are the slack scenes between Travolta and Uma Thurman, with whom he had such wonderful screen chemistry in "Pulp Fiction," and none at all here. Thurman's Edie runs an indie record label, and Chili wants her to record the work of a young singer named Linda Moon (Christina Milian), who becomes his protegee when he rescues her from her pimp-like manager (played by Vince Vaughn). One of the few delights of "Be Cool" is Vaughn's trying-to-be-black Raji.One of the problems with a movie about the music business is that it must intermittently come to a halt and let someone warble a tune to justify the soundtrack album. Milian sings with impressive authority, but her numbers stop the movie cold.Chili and Edie also have a dance number that recalls the electricity between Thurman and Travolta in "Pulp Fiction," without actually re-creating it. It's the high point of the movie, but like everything else here, it's a recycled pleasure.Director F. Gary Gray, who demonstrated such a deft touch with action-comedy in "The Italian Job," too often lets the air out of scenes by pacing them poorly, or reducing them to talking heads. When Danny DeVito, who walks through a couple of scenes as actor Martin Weir, emerges from the Viper Club with a tall blond on his arm, Gray can't seem to figure out how to frame them both in the same shot. Rather than exploit the contrast, he simply cuts off the blond's head and shoulders."Be Cool" is not without its funny moments, but most of them are the result of the comedy chops of Cedric the Entertainer (record mogul Sin LaSalle), Vaughn and Andre Benjamin (as Dabu). Sin runs a thuggish black label like Suge Knight's Death Row Records, and is abetted by the trigger-happy Dabu. Vaughn is funny every time he opens his mouth, or just to look at in his gangsta hat. If their characters are not new, the performances are at least alive and funny. It's a shame they're surrounded by this awful movie.