Coen Farce
There is a point in Intolerable Cruelty where George Clooney is giving a key note speech professing his love that is long enough to make you suspect the Coen brothers have "sold out" into schmaltz. Wrong! The film, in typical Coen style, dives into as many twists and turns as is needed in a good thriller. Fortunately, the film is a comedic farce.
Clooney plays Miles Massey, the most prominent divorce lawyer in southern California. A man so good at what he does he has a prenuptial contract named after him. Massey's good and he knows it. Near the beginning of the film, he and his assistant, Wrigley (Paul Adelstein), are chatting about how boring Massey's life has become while a sweating client sits between them as the client's wife describes how she was used as a sex slave. Massey is that confident of himself.
And confidence is what Clooney is all about. He is simply incredible. Swaggering around like a peacock while checking to make sure his teeth are clean, Clooney...
Friends don't let friends miss Coen Brothers' films...
Intolerable Cruelty has to be the funniest film I've seen all year! Fans of the Coen Brothers will instantly love this fast paced, witty and surreal piece of cinematic genius, brilliantly directed, fantastically scripted and incredibly intelligent. While the idea of Clooney and Zeta-Jones fogging up the screen in a romantic comedy turned me off so much that I missed this in the cinema, now I've seen it I can't believe I had so little faith in Joel and Ethan. The Coen's didn't write the story, so this is sadly no Big Lebowski or Fargo, and some of the characters are a tad unsubtle (Cedric the Entertainer's private dick, the half-dead head lawyer and Clooney's sidekick come to mind) but they did have a hand in the screenplay, and therefore the dialogue sparkles with the typical Coen shine. I think the best scene for this is during Zeta-Jones' first divorce, as Clooney, his sidekick and this Client, in strained whispers, discuss their experience with the Judge ("Have you sat before...
uneven film with a most beautiful woman
I doubt that there are two more strikingly attractive actors in movies today than George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Zeta-Jones, in particular, has the kind of classic beauty that puts her right up there with the great screen legends of all time, women like Ingrid Bergman, Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn, who, with their ravishing good looks and photogenic quality, came to define the ideal of female pulchritude in their time.
Credit the Coen Brothers, who made "Intolerable Cruelty," with having the good sense to know what they had in these two stars and for exploiting it to the full. They have allowed the actors to play off their good looks, most especially Ms. Zeta-Jones, portraying an icy gold-digger who specializes in marrying rich men with the express purpose of taking them for everything they've got once the marriage is ended. Clooney is the first-rate divorce lawyer who finally meets his match when he falls under the spell of this strangely bewitching woman.
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