Get Shorty

The showbiz material is pretty thin, and much of the series takes place in dusty desert locations (shot in New Mexico), focusing on tired crime-drama devices. There’s none of the playful humor of Sonnenfeld’s film (there’s barely any humor at all), or the sly cleverness of Leonard’s crime novels (captured much more effectively in the Leonard-based Justified).

A movie about movies--or a show about movies--succeeds when it is itself sharper and funnier than most other fare available, when it can spin circles around a basic B-plot. Get Shorty, the show, looks and feels a lot like everything else--expensive, but flat.

The fatal flaw here may actually be the hour-long format: Get Shorty could maybe work as a rapid-fire half-hour comedy, but at 60 minutes each, the episodes feel bloated and sluggish as they drag their feet getting to the good stuff.

By refusing to either challenge their own perspective or get into the weeds of why the big studios are in such dire straits and mostly release market-tested dreck, Get Shorty pigeonholes itself into mediocrity, something that neither Chili Palmer nor Miles Daly can abide by.