Intolerable Cruelty

In everyone else's world, people wear suits, they drive to work, they hold conversations about baseball and bagels and baby beets. In the Coen brother's world, senior partners at major law firms have tubes dangling from the middle of their chests and subscribe to "Living Without Intestines".

It's a strange place.

It's a strangely compelling place, mind you, to those who like the Coen brothers. Many of their movies -- most, perhaps -- are difficult to recommend to the average moviegoer. How do you send mom to go see a movie in which a criminal stuffs body parts into a wood chipper; in which a massive flood brings a biblical denoument to a picaresque odyssey; in which The Dude's only comment to the nihilists when they invade his bathroom is "Nice marmot" (just before they toss the marmot (actually, a ferret) into the tub with him). It's a strange place.

"Intolerable Cruelty" is their first (and, if I were a betting man, I'd bet their last) foray into Romantic Comedy. In their world, though, romantic comedy is unlike anything imagined in Hollywood. George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones, the main characters, are selfish, ambitious liars, surrounded by equally ambitious enablers. They cheat and destroy others with impunity. At one point, George (a divorce attorney/shark) is overheard saying that yes, of course the son's needs are important, but they will need to discuss whether his special education expenses are truly necessary.

Somewhere in the middle of act 3, both characters try to kill each other....which is expected in a black comedy like "War of the Roses", but which jars under the aegis of Romantic Comedy. But this is the Coen's world, and what rules there may be will be ever distorted.

Is this movie funny? Yah, you betcha. Does at least some of the humor arise from the precipitate hedonism of the protagonists? Sure, that too....and all this is filtered through the virtually unimaginable weirdness of the Coen's world. It's not our world -- it only (somewhat, and by fits and starts) resembles it.

"Intolerable Cruelty" is a re-imagining of and (semi) loving homage to the screwball comedies of the past -- soft-headed man falls for hard-hearted woman, so forth -- and a gentle send-up of same. George Clooney's performance (and, to a lesser extent, Catherine Zeta Jones' performance) are twists on (and virtual parodies of) the acting style of the 40's. Taken on their own, the performances don't entirely work (Clooney tries so hard, and it seems like a performance in which the actor is trying soooo hard). Within this darkened vision of Cary Grant's universe, though, the performances (almost) do work.

Working less effectively is the contrivedly happy ending. Were these any other filmmakers, I would dismiss it (and, retroactively, the entire movie) as sentimental and forced. This being the Coens, I'm more inclined to accept it as their final homage. Didn't work for me, although I (think I) get it.

The bottom-most bottom line lies here -- I enjoyed the movie, and it accomplished (most of) its goals. Not bad things by any schema, and downright rare in Hollywood. See it, enjoy it, and think not of it afterwards. It was always their world.