Intolerable Cruelty is the Coen Brothers' worst film. It's the least attractive, shallowest of their movies I guess because, as I was surprised and irritated to see, the studio interfered in matters of screenplay and production. Still, it is one of their funniest movies and clearly better than anybody else's film. The Coen Brother might be making concessions to commercialism but they are still the best!
Visually, the film is really weak. Catherine Zeta-Jones wearing that red dress all the time (of course, this might be explained by a later plot twist ), no characteristic vanishing point at the horizon and a rather boring editing.
The fact, of course, that the film seems not particularly deep is a deliberate means of style. For a couple of years now, the Coen Brothers have tried to post-modernize various genres of film they love. This time it's the 1930s/1940s battle-of-the-sexes screwball comedy, and the interesting thing is that this genre has already had a second hype during the early 1990s. By now, these films seem rather outdated, and so does Intolerable Cruelty. I wonder whether the Coen Brothers realize that they are committing a rather bold breech of fashion.
George Clooney is not very good but funny, the same is true for Catherine Zeta-Jones. The Coens do not need sensitive, subtle actors like most of the celebrated directors of today, they need caricatures to display their surreal view on America well. Every characters has to be kind of extreme, artificial and exaggerated, so that hilarious dialogues can be created around them. As a consequence, it must mean endless fun to play such a character in a Coen film like Billy Bob Thornton's quirkily passionate `oil billionaire', Geoffrey Rush's bitterly revenge-taking TV producer, Jonathan Hadary's indescribable concierge and Edward Herrmann's red-faced `silly usband'.
Slightly disappointed, but with great respect, I rate Intolerable Cruelty 7 out of 10.
Visually, the film is really weak. Catherine Zeta-Jones wearing that red dress all the time (of course, this might be explained by a later plot twist ), no characteristic vanishing point at the horizon and a rather boring editing.
The fact, of course, that the film seems not particularly deep is a deliberate means of style. For a couple of years now, the Coen Brothers have tried to post-modernize various genres of film they love. This time it's the 1930s/1940s battle-of-the-sexes screwball comedy, and the interesting thing is that this genre has already had a second hype during the early 1990s. By now, these films seem rather outdated, and so does Intolerable Cruelty. I wonder whether the Coen Brothers realize that they are committing a rather bold breech of fashion.
George Clooney is not very good but funny, the same is true for Catherine Zeta-Jones. The Coens do not need sensitive, subtle actors like most of the celebrated directors of today, they need caricatures to display their surreal view on America well. Every characters has to be kind of extreme, artificial and exaggerated, so that hilarious dialogues can be created around them. As a consequence, it must mean endless fun to play such a character in a Coen film like Billy Bob Thornton's quirkily passionate `oil billionaire', Geoffrey Rush's bitterly revenge-taking TV producer, Jonathan Hadary's indescribable concierge and Edward Herrmann's red-faced `silly usband'.
Slightly disappointed, but with great respect, I rate Intolerable Cruelty 7 out of 10.