Review

Review Date: 12-October-03
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

It's time for me to accept that I'm not on the same wavelength as the Coen brothers. The only film in their consistently strange and steadily growing oeuvre that I fully enjoyed is "The Big Lebowski;" usually, they just leave me cold. When you add this to the fact that I don't usually like screwball comedy, I have no cause to feel disappointment with their latest effort, "Intolerable Cruelty." But I do, because it made me realize that George Clooney is an absolute treasure and yet still sent me home unhappy.

Producer Ethan and director Joel Coen helped pen the script of "Intolerable Cruelty," which tells the rather long and drawn-out story of how a hot shot divorce lawyer named Miles Massey (Clooney) meets his match when he defends the philandering husband of an avaricious beauty named Marylin (Catherine Zeta-Jones). In addition to sexual chemistry, Miles and Marylin share a jones for manipulation and challenge: he wants to take on (and win) impossible cases in the hope of curing his boredom; she wants to swindle every last cent, masterfully and irretrievably, from the richest man she can find. Assisted by various sidekicks and hired help (often played by familiar faces in cameo roles), this compatibly despicable couple engages in a series of skirmishes that escalate in wackiness until forces greater than they are (including the combined wattage of their impeccably coifed and costumed gorgeousness) strip them of their arrogant pride and leave them exposed to the inevitable.

"Intolerable Cruelty" has an old fashioned core, with its affinity to madcap comedies like "The Lady Eve" or "His Girl Friday" and its implied certitude that even the most chauvinistic bachelor and grasping gold-digger will settle down when they find the perfect mate. Even before now people have compared Zeta-Jones' beauty with that of the glamourous stars of the '30s and '40s; but for my part there's no one alive more reminiscent of the glory days of Hollywood than George Clooney. A beefier Cary Grant, he is simultaneously drop-dead gorgeous and pitch-perfect screwball; I don't know whether to break into a full-body sweat or peals of laughter when I look at him, which is a very pleasurable sensation. Much as I was put off by the film's meandering plot and glossy exposition of human stupidity, crassness, and deceit (a Coen brothers trademark), "Intolerable Cruelty" provides exactly the sort of role in which Clooney can exhibit his particular strengths. Sure, he is good when he smolders and can handle drama if need be, but he sparkles in a way unknown to all of his contemporaries when he uses his model's physique for self-mocking buffoonery, his seductive eyes for whimsical exaggeration, and his uniquely curved lips for a syncopated stream of absurdities, ripostes, and double entendres. Clooney is a wonder to behold in "Intolerable Cruelty," and the only reason I would recommend it, but I hope he finds another forum for his talent that is more tolerable than what the Coen brothers have to offer.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.