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If I'd been watching movies back when Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks
were putting out their brilliant screwball comedies, I would have been a
big fan. As it is, I am only now discovering the treasure trove of their
films. But I am fortunate enough to be alive in the days of the
Coen Brothers, who have yet to put out a film that hasn't been
thoroughly engaging, entertaining, hilarious, thoughtful... in a word,
brilliant.
Now, I know there are a lot of you who are not fans of the Coens.
There is a troubling undercurrent in their comedy... a dangerous
undertow... While their characters are always exaggerated, even
cartoonish, with accents blown out of proportion and affectations
enlarged to make us laugh or cringe, their stories are resonant with
truths we would rather not admit about ourselves and our fellow human
beings.
In fact, their tendency to sharply portray human
failings rubs many viewers the wrong way. Their critics tend to
interpret their discomforting candor and razor-sharp
satire as Contempt for
Humanity. I disagree. I
sense a warmth in their hearts for their characters. It feels like a
vigorous playfulness, a love of language, the way they distort accents
and develop outrageous turns of phrase. I see it as a way of
celebrating our strangeness. And if you look closer, you'll find that
what at first seems cynical really does, in the end, point to love,
hope, faith, redemption... affirming all of
that good stuff.
Take, for instance, Intolerable Cruelty, their latest
screwball comedy. It positively RESOUNDS with a love for smart
dialogue... especially the sort that filled Preston Sturges films like
Sullivan's Travels. The characters sound like idiots--many of them
are--but the things they say in ignorance reveal a great deal about
them. And there is a certain poetry, a rhythm, at times even a verbal
slapstick going on.
And nobody delivers Coen Brothers' dialogue like George Clooney.
Who knew, in his days on TV's E.R., that
Clooney had such comedy potential? Here, he
makes something memorable out of almost every line, and he moves with an
exuberance that commands your attention. Oscar will find this film too
light and fluffy, and they will overlook his performance... but it
really is award-worthy work. Nobody else could have done what he has
done to create Miles Massey, the world's most talented and cruel divorce
lawyer.
The story concerns Massey's encounter with a
villainous temptress,
Marylin
Rexroth Doyle (Catherine Zeta-Jones),
a woman who baits men into marrying her and then,
when she has her hands on their assets, promptly dumps them and steals
away with vast rewards.
Massey is fascinated by Marilyn's malevolence, and
goes to work with all of the wicked tricks in his book to try and
disrupt her marathon of marriages. But along the way, he is smitten with
her, and determines that the whole pursuit will culminate when he
himself wins her over... permanently.
Of course, she smells blood and begins devising
ways to lure Massey in for the kill. Undefeated, Massey has no idea what
kind of trouble he's stumbled into. And when he feels the trap closing
around him, he panics, and things turn chaotic.
But then something unexpected happens to both of
them. They are brought to a place where they realize that they have
achieved all of their dreams. And lo... behold... they are unsatisfied.
This is unsettling to them. They suddenly understand that while they
have conquered the world, they are alone, their lives are empty, all of
their worldly victories worth nothing at all. Could it be that, perhaps,
they might learn to humble themselves and try something new... something
like real love?
There is a big beating heart in the middle of the
Coens' cheap shots at lawyers and at marriage. (Let me clarify: They're
not mocking the law--they're mocking lawyers and others who manipulate
the law to their own ends. They're not mocking marriage: They're mocking
those who marry for selfish gain.) As all of the abuses of these
institutions lead to emptiness and distress, the Coens slowly reaffirm
what we've known all along... that the law is there to serve us, not to
enable us to do harm; and that marriage is a covenant of trust,
fidelity, and selfless love.
The Coens also point in the other direction,
showing where self-interested souls end up if they persist in their
greed and heartlessness. The film's most bizarre sequences come when
Massey has to visit the head of his law firm. Here the Coens bring back
a figure who appears in all of their films: the Man with the Power who
Sits Behind a Desk. This time, the Great Manipulator turns out to be
more than just a buffoon. He's more like the devil himself, a snarling
and wheezing monster of a man, a wretch hooked up to a jungle of IVs and
devices that keep his cold heart beating. Clooney plays his scenes with
this beastly old character brilliantly, mirroring our own bewilderment
as he recoils in dismay.
There are also several memorable performances,
actors reveling in the opportunity to add great characters to the zoo of
Coen cuckoos.
Zeta-Jones does her finest screen work here,
giving Doyle that luminous movie star quality that you see on the
Classics channel but rarely in contemporary films. She is drop-dead
gorgeous, convincingly intelligent, and she has surprising chemistry
with Clooney. I'd like to see them work together again.
Cedric the Entertainer is my favorite of the
supporting goofballs in this flick. He plays Gus Petch, a man with a
video camera who works to catch spouses in the midst of their
extramarital affairs. His favorite line: "I'm gonna nail your ass!" By
the end of the film, he has the audience shouting it right along with
him. (How often does THAT happen in a crowded movie theatre?)
Geoffrey Rush and Edward Hermann jump into their
roles as crazed divorcees with enthusiasm that almost overextends their
comical abilities. Rush actually gets a little out of hand, but I'll
excuse it because he opens the film with a brilliant and immediate
joke... a rich man in a fancy car driving along singing Simon and
Garfunkel's "The Boxer."
Billy Bob Thornton, on the other hand, has one of
his most subdued roles, getting laughs for being such a thick-headed
dupe, a wealthy lamebrain in a cowboy hat. He seems underused here, but
he does get at least one quotable quote that has the audience roaring.
And, as usual, the Coens' preferred
cinematographer Roger Deakins captures all of this with dazzling
camerawork. He gives screwball comedy better treatment than it has ever
received. And he finds some brilliant visual jokes, especially regarding
the alarming whiteness of George Clooney's teeth.
There is a
serious flaw in the film that cannot go unmentioned. This is the first
film in which the Coens have collaborated with other comedy writers, and
at times you can tell that their sophisticated scripting has been
diluted by lesser ideas. At times, the film stoops
unusually low for laughs. There are several sequences that win the
audience's response by digging into the ditches of comedy, with lame
jokes about deviant sex and bodily disorders.
It may make the
average moviegoer laugh, but it is the kind of comedy that fills bad
sitcoms... it's beneath the Coens to deliver stuff like this.
Fortunately, though, those moments are few and far between.
But for the
most part, the script is whip-smart. As Massey's ploy unravels and he
loses control of his life, the Coens come closer to the zaniness of
their greatest comedy, Raising Arizona, then they have in all of
their movies since then. Like The Big Lebowski and The
Hudsucker Proxy, this is an outrageous farce that will get funnier
with repeated viewings.
Jeffrey's Rating:
B+
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