Get Shorty

I wanted to like Get Shorty more than I did, but honestly it wasn't clever enough. The whole book is a comparison between the criminal world and Hollywood, with the conclusion that they are basically the same—full of lying, cheating, full of it and themselves, crooks.

That premise was okay with me, but the author went about it by making it self-reflexive (you know, meta). That would have been okay with me too if it wasn't so repetitive. It felt like most of it was different characters explaining the plot of the book I was reading to me over and over again.

And those characters? Meh. I liked Chili. He wasn't as stereotypical as he could have been. But all of the characters were more or less bland. I didn't care much about them or what happened to them. And none of them really stood out.

The writing style was good. I liked Elmore Leonard's sense of voice and the occasional humor injected in.

Overall, it was okay but didn't live up to the hype. Maybe I'll like the movie better. (Edit: I did like the movie better. It happens more than you'd think.)