Intolerable Cruelty

I like the films of the Coen brothers. Some I love (The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo), while others I find are very good films that don't connect with me in the same way (Blood Simple, Hudsucker Proxy, The Man Who Wasn't There). They are consistently interesting, have specific visions they want to do, and their dialogue is always fantastic. Mind you, even I'm sceptical about them remaking The Ladykillers. Anyway, a new Coen brothers film is always something pleasant on the cinematic horizon.

Intolerable Cruelty is, for me, 'Coen brothers Lite.' While there are some hilarious moments, some lovely moments, and George Clooney is great, it doesn't all add up. The story didn't originate with them, and they worked on it and made the film from it, which I think shows in the finished product. Logic, even skewed, usually is important in their work, things being connected and following on from them. This film doesn't have that, with some parts of the film seeming just to be ignored for the sake of creating a screwball romantic comedy.

George Clooney is Miles Massey, the perfect divorce lawyer, who feels empty in his life, because he doesn't have someone to love. Catherine Zeta-Jones is Marilyn Rex-Roth, a gold-digging wife, whose plans are foiled by the Clooney's skills in court. Only, he finds himself in love with her, only for her to go and marry somebody else. You know how these things end, so I don't have to go on, but I do have to mention the fact that the final act blatantly ignores certain facts, like how lawyers work in any sort of situation, and how, if she is marrying such a well-known rich person, that it would somehow not be in the glossy magazines when she gets married, cutting to 'Six Months Later' as a feeble excuse to skip over the gaping holes in the plot. This isn't how it should be in a Coen brothers film.

Clooney is an adept comic actor, and is wonderful to watch, and Zeta-Jones fits her part with ease and, fortunately, isn't annoying when she could so easily have been. There had been much talk of this being the Coen's breakthrough to the mainstream, what with the star power of George and Catherine to drag in the punters, and I certainly hoped that it achieved it for them, as they deserve it, but I would rather it be from one of their better films.

Rating: VID