Intolerable Cruelty Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)October 10th, 2003
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Intolerable Cruelty is broad and light enough, had one not seen the opening credits, to never, ever be mistaken for a Coen brothers film. The brains behind flicks like Blood Simple, Fargo and The Man Who Wasn't There have never seemed so conventional. They've also never tried to make a textbook romantic comedy before, either. And Cruelty is their first picture not to have been born from their fertile yet off-kilter minds, as well as the first in their 19-year career to feature help from an outside producer. That said producer is Brian Grazer - the king of middling un-Coen-y blockbusters like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps - does nothing to hinder their fall from grace.
Maybe Cruelty is, like Full Frontal, some kind of big inside joke us outsiders just don't get. But the Coens really don't seem like the type to pull a fast one like that. Aside from a few eccentric oddball characters and a couple of shots of a feared man behind a big old desk, there is approximately one moment in Cruelty that immediately would strike a viewer as something distinctively Coen-esque.
Sadly, change is not a good thing - at least when it comes to Cruelty. George Clooney (Solaris) plays shallow Miles Massey, Southern California's greatest divorce lawyer and creator of the infamously unbreakable Massey Prenup. Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago) is Marylin Rexroth, a gold-digging whore who Miles screws out of millions during her divorce proceedings with her latest mark, Rex Rexroth (Edward Herrmann, Gilmore Girls). Apparently, there is some unwritten rule that states divorce films must always costar Cedric the Entertainer, because he's here, too, playing the same inconsequential role he did in Serving Sara.
When Miles falls for Marylin, a cat-and-mouse power struggle ensues in fairly predictable fashion. Co-writers Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone also penned groundbreaking comedies like Big Trouble and Life, so what the heck did you expect? Note to aspiring writers: Clever names do not a clever script make (Rex Rexroth, Ramona Barcelona, Ollie Olerud, Donovan Donaly and, of course, Heinz the Baron Krauss von Espy). Cruelty's gags include a barely funny "Who's On First" routine and Miles' "Love is Good" speech to a room full of contemporaries, which sounds like Gordon Gecko after taking an arrow from Cupid. And here's a question for any attorneys out there: Why does tearing up one copy of a prenuptial agreement render it null and void? Who doesn't get more than one of them signed? Has anyone heard of triplicate?
On the plus side, there's a hysterical Bruce Campbell cameo that the cackling audience (the same folks who loved America's Sweethearts, I imagine) just didn't get. Cruelty, along with its two leads, looks downright terrific, thanks to the warm lensing from Coen regular Roger Deakins. Clooney's role has the most meat, replacing Everett Ulysses McGill's hair hang-up from O Brother, Where Art Thou? with a maniacal fetish for having clean, white teeth. But it's not enough to keep Cruelty's disappointingly lame story afloat.
1:40 - PG-13 for sexual content, language and brief violence
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