Intolerable Cruelty Review
by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)October 16th, 2003
INTOLERABLE CRUELTY
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A cagey divorce lawyer and a cagier
divorcee match wits in a battle over who gets
the proceeds of multiple divorces. INTOLERABLE
CRUELTY is very much a mainstream film with a
prosaic style and plot. That is uncharacteristic
of the inventive Coen Brothers. Adequate for a
fun night but disappointing as a Coen Brothers
film. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)
Think of a Coen Brothers film and you usually think of flashy camera moves. Frequently it will have a weird point of view that can be accented with bizarre humor. Almost always the Brothers write their own stories from scratch. All but HUDSUCKER PROXY have been crime films. INTOLERABLE CRUELTY is a crime film, but really just nominally. Even watching this film one never gets the flavor of a Coen Brothers film. It is more like a screwball comedy than it is like a MILLER'S CROSSING.
George Clooney plays Miles Massey, a motor-mouthed divorce lawyer of national renown. He is a master of the prenuptial agreement that protects the financial assets of a marrying client from the spouse when it comes time to dissolve the marriage. (Usually that is from six months to six years.) Massey designed the classic cast-iron pre-nuptial agreement that protects each partner's prenuptial assets and which cannot be broken. Some schools spend an entire semester studying it. Divorce is really a game. A beautiful woman marries a rich man, stays with him a short time, and then they let the lawyers fight it out to decide how much of the man's assets the woman can take. A group of such women are repeatedly shown luxuriating in a pool at a country club as they discuss the game. One of these rich divorcees is Marylin (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Massey defended client Rex Rexroth (Edward Herrmann) against her and finds he is attracted to her himself. When Massey meets her Marylin is sucking dry her former husband and is ready to leave the husk and move on. Massey is smitten with Marylin and figures he is the one man with legal dexterity to best her at her own divorce game. Massey is like a praying mantis male, trying to mate and still not be eaten.
The Coen Brother use Welsh actress Zeta-Jones to seduce the audience the way Hitchcock used Grace Kelly. She does not show much range but she is undeniably desirable. George Clooney has resurrected much the same overripe oiliness of his character in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU and transplanted it to the opposite end of the social spectrum. He is supposed to be an unflappable cast- iron divorce lawyer, but in the presence of Marylin he loses his control and just stares enraptured at her, saying things like "You fascinate me." His slightly gawky exaggerated performance is the one thing that stands in the way of there being screen chemistry between him and the elegant Zeta-Jones. Of course, part of the premise is that the rich are all a little wacky.
Familiar faces punctuate the rest of the cast. Billy Bob Thornton plays a Texas oil millionaire with some very strange tastes in marriage ceremonies. Geoffrey Rush is a television producer who ends up a victim in the divorce game. Cedric the Entertainer who played Eddie the Barber in BARBERSHOP is along as the guy who loves his job of getting videotape evidence of infidelities.
If this does not seem like the usual Coen Brothers fare, it is not really their story. Joel and Ethan Coen were invited in to rewrite the script for one of its many revisions and considerably later they were asked to direct. The result is a script that is not a Coen Brothers sort of story, but one that has some Coen Brothers touches. INTOLERABLE CRUELTY is not a bad film, but it certainly isn't the uncommon material one usually expects from the Coens. I would rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the - 4 to +4 scale.
Minor spoiler---It is absurd to assume that either partner can terminate a contract at any time just by destroying the original. Who would sign an agreement so easy for one side to unilaterally cancel?
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected]
Copyright 2003 Mark R. Leeper
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