The problem with “Be Cool” isn’t so much that it’s crass, stupid, shrill, ugly, sexist, homophobic, and outrageously racist. The problem has little to do with John Travolta’s zombified performance, nor can it be said to lie in his makeup job, which might be described as the pancake application of Moldy Peach foundation. Uma Thurman (Edie Athens) isn’t the problem, although her pained look throughout the movie suggests she’s aware of it.

All of these things – and many, many more – are tangential to the crisis of “Be Cool.” The precise problem with this intolerably smug, excruciatingly clueless, painfully inept fiasco is that it is, by several degrees, considerably less cool than “The Polar Express.”

In 1995, the quality of cinematic “cool” was noticeable in a movie called “Get Shorty.” Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, the master of crisp, sardonic pulp fiction, the film starred John Travolta as a Miami gangster who makes a go of it as a Hollywood movie producer. That’s an easy joke on paper; on screen, director Barry Sonnenfeld (“Men in Black”), writer Scott Frank (“Out of Sight”), and a canny ensemble of actors brought it nimbly to life.

Fresh off the super cool career resurrection of “Pulp Fiction,” Mr. Travolta was relaxed, confident, and clearly enjoying his newfound credibility. The essential quality of Chili Palmer, the root of his success both as gangster and Hollywood player, was an unflappable verbal and physical nonchalance. Chili didn’t pack heat; he disarmed you with his chilled elan. Easy to do when you’ve survived “Look Who’s Talking Now” to be nominated for an Oscar in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

In “Be Cool,” the long-delayed sequel to “Get Shorty,” Chili has frozen solid. Grimacing beneath his grotesque tan jab, Mr. Travolta delivers perfunctory line readings of witless dialogue. It’s as if cool were being transmitted in from a great distance – beyond the Scientology Celebrity Centre in downtown Hollywood; beyond the gravitational field of “Battlefield Earth” – to be amplified, weakly, via a receiver strapped to Mr. Travolta’s back. (Bloggers, we await the screenshots!)

From the very first scene it’s obvious how out of touch the new project is. Rolling through Hollywood in a fat black Cadillac, Chili chats with Tommy Athens (James Woods), the overbearing, delusional, tweaked-out owner of a struggling record label. Their topic of conversation? The indignity of starring in a sequel. With such played-out postmodernism does “Be Cool” signal to its audience that it’s “in” on the joke – in this case, the awkward gag of celebrating your own creative bankruptcy.

“Be Cool” is rank with this sub-“Scream” reflexivity. It’s an unspeakably sour experience to watch a soulless movie that keeps reminding you it has no soul, as if that let anyone off the hook. “I think movies are too corporate,” a character declares shortly before director F. Gary Gray (“The Italian Job”) cuts to a shot of her T-Mobile Sidekick, the cell-phone model used by every character in the film.

As they drive, Chili and Tommy are surrounded by phony advertisements for Tom Hanks movies. Their destination is called something like “Rehab Cafe” or “The Recovery Bistro.” My memory is hazy – I was stoned on indifference five minutes in – but it was funny because everyone in Los Angeles is a substance abuser. Ha ha ha!

Russian mobsters pull up and shoot Tommy to death, but our sympathies are largely directed to the collateral damage inflicted on Chili’s Cadillac. The mincing representative of an insurance company materializes and flourishes the keys to his new ride, a tiny Honda hybrid. Ha ha ha! This is funny because hybrid cars are gay.

Chili pilots his fey wheels up the Hollywood Hills and pays a visit to Tommy’s widow/business partner Edie (Uma Thurman), who greets him with a spread-eagle display of her thong bottom. The label is in trouble; Chili vows to help; Edie puts on the first of several outfits that suggest the “Be Cool” fashion sense is as dated as its sense of humor.

At the Viper Room, Chili discovers the talents of the bodacious vocalist Linda Moon (Christina Milian). Alas, Ms. Moon is lorded over by her manager Raji (an insufferable Vince Vaughn), aka “Roger Lowenthal,” an obnoxious would-be pimp who “thinks he’s black.” In the world of “Be Cool,” this means he dresses is red velvet jumpsuits, speaks in jive, is mentally deficient, and is prone to murder people. Raji is backed up by a gay Samoan bodyguard/aspiring actor named Elliot Wilhelm (The Rock).

Eliot is funny, as all gay people are funny, because he decorates his apartment with Cher posters, likes to wear tight shiny trousers, and is a big sissy.

Faux-blacks and nelly muscle prove no contest for Chili’s steely nerves, and he absconds with Linda back to Edie’s place for recording sessions. This doesn’t go over well with Nick Carr (Harvey Keitel), owner of a competing label, who’s got her on contract. Nick dispatches some Russian goons to cook Chili.

Meanwhile, over at the Moon sessions, the Dub MC’s are paying a visit. Led by the Harvard-educated, faux-thug producer Sin LaSalle (Cedric the Entertainer), the gangsta rap posse have come to collect $300,000 owed them, yo. As black folk are wont to do, they brandish customized 9mm handguns and curse, but Chili tells them to be cool, the money is on its way.

Thus is set in motion the crisscrossing subplots that fuel the next hour of agonizing, offensive idiocy. Linda strives to be a star as Chili deals with all who would try and stop her. His simmering romance with Edie congeals into sludge at a Black Eyed Peas show, as they perform one of the silliest dance duets in recent cinema. After Linda is briefly kidnapped by Nick, he humiliates her by booking an appearance at an Asian nightclub. This is humiliating because Asians are lame.

What constitutes the attitude of “cool” is tricky to pin down. That one man’s cool may be another man’s lukewarm is the result of countless factors of taste, culture, and sensibility. The essential quality of cool is effortlessness; nothing is squarer than trying too hard. That’s my beef with movies like “Lost in Translation” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” – movies considered the apex of cool by almost everyone I know – which I find so calculated in their attitude and style, so aggressively, transparently “now” that they register less as expressions of cool than as hipster checklists.

But it’s giving too much credit to say that “Be Cool” even tries to be cool, let alone fails. This film’s idea of a good joke is to stare at someone eating stuffed cabbage with their mouth open. For a director who made his name in music videos, Mr. Gray has a remarkably outdated notion of contemporary pop style. The secret to Linda’s success ends up being a duet with – how cool is this? – Aerosmith. Her superstardom is cemented by a weak R&B track paired with a video that jacks the Asian strip club aesthetic of Janet Jackson’s “If” video – from 1993.

If there’s anything cool about “Be Cool,” it’s the meta-cool possibility that the worst film of the year is already out of the way.