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Intolerable Cruelty
(Reviewed September 24, 2003)
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Leave your high expectations and goodwill toward the Coen Brothers at home, because this would-be comedy is shockingly, depressingly mediocre. (Translation: If you're looking for big "Raising Arizona"
laughs, or if you are expecting cleverly offbeat black humor a la "Fargo," you will be very, very disappointed.)
What's sad is that the characters played by "Intolerable Cruelty" stars George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones are likeable enough (and so good-looking they are like gods walking among us).
But the slow-moving plot through which they must plod is like a flat, badly padded "Love American Style" vignette. It tries for screwball comedy, but has precious little of the snap and crackle that makes
those movies pop. Christ, was that ever a cornball, embarrasing, mainstream-critic-type sentence. What am I, trying out for the goddamned "Today" show or something? Jesus!
You'll know from the movie's first scene (Hollywood producer Geoffrey Rush arrives home unexpectedly and catches his spouse cheating on him with the pool man -- a set-up we've most
recently seen done better in "Mulholland Drive") that you should have spent your entertainment dollar elsewhere. How badly directed and unfunny is it? It's like television. 'Nuff said.
Clooney is a charmingly easygoing but kinda wacked-out divorce lawyer, and Zeta-Jones is a slinky, golddigging wife for whom he has the hots. Sounds like a great premise, and there definitely
is a decent movie in here that is trying to get out, but something is just "off." Everything is forced, badly edited and nowhere near as slyly sexy as it should be.
Clooney is goofy and animated and tries to rise above the material. He was so good in the Coens' "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" that this reteaming should have been gold from the git-go. Maybe
the fault lies with the fact that "Intolerable Cruelty" started out as a script by other writers that the Coens retooled. In the future, they might be advised to stick to their own material, as opposed to punching a
time clock to churn out something in which they seem to have so little of themselves invested.
It's a damned shame, it is.
Back Row Grade: C-
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