Review of Intolerable Cruelty (2003) by Jordan P — 25 May 2010
This is a friggin' weird movie. It's weird tonally, the characters act weird, and the whole thing is so over the top that I was more bewildered than entertained. While it has a lot of the usual Coen elements in it, the movie as a whole feels like it was cobbled together from spare parts of Blood Simple and directed as an homage to silent slapstick.
George Clooney's idea of comedy is apparently to mug and spin around and cock his head funny. There's a lot of that here, but it's also mixed in with George Clooney the Calm, Self-Assured Guy we're familiar with, so his character is just... weird. Catherine Zeta-Jones looks fantastic, as is her wont, but the movie constructed around her is so... weird.
Lord, the word I keep coming back to is "weird." The movie isn't bad, really, it's just so odd it defies ready explanation. My brain refuses to digest it. It's over the top, unsubtle, not really that funny, drifts wildly between surreal black comedy and rubber-faced slapstick, and it's just weird.
This review of Intolerable Cruelty (2003) was written by Jordan P on 25 May 2010.
Intolerable Cruelty has generally received positive reviews.
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