Well it’s been out a couple of weeks, and hasn’t exactly set the review world alight, but I simply have to see everything that the Coen brothers put out.
Intolerable Cruelty starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones has everything going for it. It’s supposedly based on those fast talking screwball comedies of the thirties and forties, and both leads are likeable. But something hasn’t gelled quite right. The opening credits were fine, and the music is great, but the script does not whizz along at the rate of knots I was expecting.
There are a few laughs to be had, but not nearly enought. I was wondering where the screwball element was supposed to be until I recognised one set-up as being the whole of His Girl Friday – was Billy Bob Thornton directly playing Ralph Bellamy?
It’s really painful to write this, and sadly critics who said they didn’t like are right, it’s just not very good. It’s not terrible, but you expect oh so much more from the Coens. Clooney and Zeta-Jones don’t even have the chemistry you come to expect from them. Clooney can play comedy well, and think of the chemistry between him and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight – they sizzled. OK – that was a different type of film, but still…