Coen brothers return in force with Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty

Before I start this review, I need to get one quick thing out of the way. It may seem odd and quite out of place, but it must be said. I don’t think that I’m giving anything away in saying this, but the statement that I’m about to make concerns a fairly major plot point of the film that is based upon absolute fallacy, and if I don’t say something about it in this review, I feel I may go mad. Here it is: physically destroying a legal contract does in no way, shape or form nullify it. There. Now that that’s done with, on with the review.

Intolerable Cruelty, the latest film from the much acclaimed Coen brothers, is a story about love-well, largely life without it. It is a story about the limits of reason and dispassion.

And, it is a story about the eternal battle within the human soul between the intangible joy derived from love and trusting those you love and the tempting but ultimately hollow joy to be distilled from material wealth.

Unfortunately, a film with such lofty goals cannot help but falter at least a little bit along the way. This is not to say that the film is bad by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable movie-going experience. It just doesn’t deliver on every single count.

The film revolves around the characters of George Clooney’s Miles, a delightfully weasely divorce lawyer, obsessed with the whiteness of his teeth and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Marilyn, a professional gold digger who collects surnames like trophies of successful hunts. Both are cold, dispassionate opportunists who profit greatly from the artful exploitation of the love of those around them, and both hate themselves for it. Though, only Clooney’s character knows it.

Both actors turn in commendable performances, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling throughout the film that each was planning a grocery or to-do list to be attended to after the current scene was complete, but that could have been intentional dispassion.

The story clips along like a heavy-handed morality play for the first two-thirds of the film with witty dialogue and cute absurdity being the prime factors standing between the viewer and boredom.

Though, in fairness, they stand pretty tall. It isn’t until the movie nears its end that it becomes much more than a series of hilarious situations connected by a plot that feels almost like an afterthought.

However, once the film really gets going, it’s more than worth the wait. Gone is the nagging feeling that more than a few of those involved are merely mailing it in. The dialogue gets better, the jokes less forced, and the storyline no longer feels like it was heavily influenced by the results of a focus group.

What begins as an entertaining, if slightly hollow, romantic comedy ends as an achievement worthy of the Coen brothers’ illustrious reputations. It’s just a shame that it takes so long for them to get into high gear.

This movie is much too large to properly review in such a small space. To give a film like Intolerable Cruelty a fair hearing could very well take up the length of a small novella. This is especially true when said film is neither awful nor particularly breathtaking but is merely good-perhaps even knocking on the door of great.

That said, allow me to summarize. Intolerable Cruelty is a thoroughly enjoyable movie and I wholeheartedly recommend that you go see it. However, it is a strictly walk, don’t run, affair.