Posted: 10/23/2003

Intolerable Cruelty

(2003)

by Coco Delgado

Coen’s departure leaves essence of Coens intolerably muddled.

Intolerable Cruelty is the latest Coen Brothers film. But just as Le Divorce (another marital mayhem movie) was a Merchant-Ivory film that didn’t feel like a Merchant-Ivory film, this doesn’t really feel like a Coen Brothers film. It’s really rather slick and breezy, but then, when you least expect it, a little flare of surrealism flashes and you’re reminded just who’s driving this car.

It’s a movie about love and trust. It’s a movie about marriage and divorce. It’s a movie about how all these things can mess you up beyond belief and change your life forever.

And it’s a direct descendent of the great screwball comedies like His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby. George Clooney as Miles Massey does a pretty good Cary Grant (without the accent, of course), while Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Marilyn seems to be channeling Susan Hayward. They make the movie, and while they don’t exactly have chemistry, they have a camaraderie and a conspiratorial jolliness that more than makes up for it. Other screwballs include Geoffrey Rush as a cuckolded television producer, Cedric the Entertainer as a private investigator, and Billy Bob Thornton as Catherine Z-J’s future ex-husband. The nicest surprise was seeing Julia Duffy, the maid from Newhart, as Catherine Z-J’s friend and inspiration. The most disconcerting thing in the film was Edward Herrmann, Lorelai Gilmore’s dad, as a…well…as a train fetishist, I guess is the only way to explain it.

Still…with all that it has going for it (great cast, great writing, clever idea), somehow it just falls flat. It’s not really a romantic comedy so much as it is a spoof of romantic comedies. At times it’s a pastiche of lawyer jokes and LA jokes (the iron-clad Massey pre-nup, Miles’ fascination with his whitened teeth). There’s also a lot of repetition of these gags, which, while funny the first time, lose their freshness rather quickly.

It’s not a bad little movie…it just wasn’t as good as I was expecting or as I was hoping. But then…isn’t that also kind of the reasoning behind a divorce?

Coco Delgado lives in Cambridge-Somerville and always sits in the front row. Her 2003 New Years resolution is to see more than the 66 movies she saw last year.

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