How could you believe me when I said I love you...
when you know I've been a liar all my life!
Enemies, a Love Story
Michael Atkinson
October 2003
 The issue, for me, has never been the basic nature of la méthode Coenist, an arch, slapstick genre gumbo-boil into which anything can be tossed: Carrollesque wordplay, Lou Costello ejaculations, magical thinking, Top 40 camp, Acme Inc. calamity, historical semi-satire, outrageous sentiment. The issue, at least since the mini-masterstroke of Fargo, has been the dissipating density of the brothers' ideas; waiting out the downtime between inventions in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Man Who Wasn't There fairly squelched their conceptual charm. Intolerable Cruelty falls somewhere mid-field, prosaic in style and batting .50 at yuks, yet entirely of a bouncy, lunatic piece. The film's ethical universe is a poisonous mockery worthy of Donald Westlake: Marriage and divorce are merely maneuvers to seize or reseize assets; husbands and wives are embattled grifters; divorce lawyers are combat strategists for whom no lie is too absurd. Cow-eyed matrimonial super-counsel Miles Massey (George Clooney) only becomes despondent when serial viper-divorcee Marylin (Catherine Zeta-Jones) appears to be marrying for love; when her duplicitous schemes arise, he becomes joyous with ardor. Conjuring a Sturges-Tashlin anti-romantic hysteria, the Coens (with the help of several studio screenwriters, in various drafts) position Miles as the successful hollow man pining for love and meaning, more or less following Marylin's career of husband-dumping and fortune-amassing with stars in his eyes. They're amoral soulmates, but their very unscrupulousness keeps mucking things up. (Characters keep impulsively tearing up prenups, only to be told in alarm, "You're exposed!") The movie is brimming with legal doublespeak and looming backstory (the names of historic divorce settlements are familiar to everyone, but never explained), but it's not above a simple who's-on-first routine, as with a three-way courtroom terminology wrangle and a dyspeptic diner argument about a green salad.Zeta-Jones is merely ravishing, but Clooney owns the film. Ordinarily best at sardonic, man's-man confidence, he strides through Intolerable Cruelty with fantastic screwball zest. To see Clooney tenderize, season, grill, and serve this ham hock of a role is to see an old-fashioned virtuoso in perpetual motion. His restless artillery of double-takes, baffled winces, fake smiles, stunned glares, tongue-on-teeth inspections, and zealous line readings might make up the ripest lead perf in a Hollywood film since Cary Grant's in Arsenic and Old Lace.
 Like Sturges, the Coens love to stock the corners of their movies with vivid dollops of screaming caricature, and here Jonathan Hadary (as a flaming concierge on the stand), Cedric the Entertainer (as a splenetic private dick), and Tom Aldredge (as the law firm's decrepit founder) recognize no bounds to their yowling. For many, the cruel lack of sympathy the Coens display toward their characters has always been intolerable, and certainly the trampolining cartoonishness tends to keep the scenario's social critique at a safe distance. (Their unimaginative catalog of femmes fatales wears thin, too.) But taking easy shots at lawyers, millionaires, and gold diggers doesn't mean wasted gunpowder. (If only this pleasantly vicious cynicism were as ubiquitous as our mutant faith in legal dickering and wealth honor.) At any rate, the film comes around, in typical Coen fashion, to selling a refrain of uplift it has otherwise spent every ounce of its energy refuting. Whatever: It's a barrel of monkeys, and Clooney's the bull baboon. |
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| A kicky pair of heels in love October 10th, 2003
 INTOLERABLE CRUELTY. With George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cedric the Entertainer. Running time: 100 mins. Rated PG-13: Sexual content, language, brief violence.Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have been surprising us with their twisted genre riffs from the 1984 "Blood Simple" through the 2000 "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
 Now comes their biggest surprise - they've gone commercial."Intolerable Cruelty" is a screwball black comedy, reflecting both the style of Preston Sturges and the tone of "War of the Roses," with just enough Coen brothers touches to make it recognizable as theirs.
It plays like "War of the Roses" in reverse. The featured couple start out trying to destroy each other and along the way discover mutual respect - albeit for their antisocial tendencies.
The key to its commerciality is in its sublimely decorative casting of George Clooney, the closest Hollywood has come to a replacement for Cary Grant, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, a smoldering beauty on the order of Ava Gardner.
Clooney is Miles Massey, a Beverly Hills divorce lawyer who specializes and takes particular glee in denying calculating divorcées the settlements they've been counting on since meeting and marrying their rich, usually older husbands.
Zeta-Jones is one such gold-dust divorcée, Marylin Rexroth, and she doesn't take well to being thwarted in her pursuit of a fortune.
 After a hilarious opening, in which Massey rescues his wealthy client from Marylin in court, the suave lawyer and his mesmerizing prey begin a cat-and-mouse game that moves lickety-split toward an uncertain romantic alliance.One of the most recognizable Coen touches is Clooney himself. He plays Miles like a cleaned-up and educated version of his hair-conscious chain-gang escapee in "O Brother."
Rather than hair, the object of Miles' narcissistic compulsion is his teeth, which he keeps brilliantly bleached and under the constant surveillance of available reflective surfaces.
Clooney knocks this role out of the park.
He simply has the most engaging screen personality of any contemporary star. He's as good-looking as a tax refund, but, more important, he has a casual ease before the camera that makes his performances seem effortless.
 Zeta-Jones is Clooney's physical match, but there's a bit too much of her "Chicago" persona Velma Kelly in this character.Though Marylin is a great femme fatale, she never shows a speck of the humanity that we are eventually asked to accept.
The Coens needed to include one or two more scenes in which Marylin shows some vulnerability, either to Miles or to her best friend, Sarah (Julia Duffy), another serial divorcée in whom she confides her own schemes.
But if "Intolerable Cruelty" isn't a convincing love story, it's a hugely entertaining one, with comic relief - in the form of Cedric the Entertainer as a voyeuristic private eye and Tom Aldredge as a decaying law-firm boss issuing directives while hooked up to life-support - piled on top of the comedy.
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Film 'Cruel' But Not 'Intolerable'
Nicole Child
October 2003
 As I walked out of the theatre for the screening of "Intolerable Cruelty," my mind still trying to figure out just what the hell that movie was about, I heard a woman remark, "That was true love." I suppressed an urge to turn to her and reply, "No, that was true stupidity.""Intolerable Cruelty" joins George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones in a film about…well, again, I'm not really sure what it was about. Greed? Lust? Compromise? Perhaps all of those things.
Clooney plays Miles Massey, a rich divorce lawyer who makes his living, as all lawyers do, lying in court and playing off the weaknesses of vulnerable men and women. Zeta-Jones is Marilyn Rexroth, a beautiful and seductive woman who thrives on marrying rich men and acquiring their wealth after she abruptly divorces them. Rexroth's plans for financial freedom are foiled when Massey proves in court that she only married her current husband (Edward Herrmann) for money.
What follows is a string of conspiracies within conspiracies. You never know who is screwing who over. It's very reminiscent of "Down With Love," where you can't help but wonder what it is that these two people even see in each other. After only three or four conversations, suddenly Rexroth and Massey marry. This was one of the most ridiculous things in the movie, but I suppose it isn't all that implausible for two people who barely know each other to get married on a whim. And hey, George Clooney was in a kilt, so I really can't complain.
 What I can complain about is the chemistry between Rexroth and Massey. And when I say chemistry, I mean it in the sense that there wasn't any. There was absolutely no reason for these two characters to fall in love, if it can even be construed as love. The characters were mostly underdeveloped, and the audience really only gets to see one side of each character. With Rexroth, we only witness a ruthless gold-digger, willing to hurt anyone for the chance at a fortune. Massey is slightly more three-dimensional, but only because he has a brief period where he repents the life of deceit he has led. But that image is abruptly shattered when he hires a hit-man to kill Rexroth, who has claimed half his assets in an inevitable divorce. Massey is even willing to allow her to be killed until he realizes she actually owes him money. And when Rexroth tries to have Massey killed, you know they were meant to be together. If that isn't true love, then I don't know what is. The guest appearances of several famous actors made the movie more enjoyable, as it took focus off the empty relationship between Massey and Rexroth. Geoffrey Rush plays Donovan Donaly, a rich soap opera producer who finds his wife cheating on him, but is left bankrupt when Massey lies his way through court in support of the adulterous wife. Billy Bob Thornton plays Howard Doyle, the second husband of Rexroth, who is also left bankrupt after Rexroth divorces him. Edward Herrmann was by far the most entertaining character, though I couldn't get out of my mind the idea of Rory Gilmore's grandfather playing "trains" with a group of naked women. I will never look at "Gilmore Girls" in the same way again.As ridiculous as this movie was, it was hard not to laugh. There's something about a Coen brothers' film that makes even the most serious of situations seem humorous. They make the accidental suicide of a hit-man amusing; how many films can do that? Despite the void of emotions between Massey and Rexroth, I actually found myself hoping that things would work out for those two crazy kids, because their relationship was too funny not to work. Every movie has its redeeming qualities, and humor was "Intolerable Cruelty's."
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Intolerable Cruelty
Glenn Kenny's Review
 Filmmaking kin Joel and Ethan Coen dip their toe into the Hollywood mainstream again, teaming up with big producer Brian Grazer for this frantic post-screwball comedy. Last time the Coens danced with the Tinseltown devil was 1994's The Hudsucker Proxy, partially overseen by bearish boor Joel Silver, who delivered the production values while the Coens themselves delivered some priceless moments but a decidedly mixed whole.Cruelty, which the Coens rewrote from a script that had been kicking around the industry for a bit, pits ruthless but strangely likable (not to mention strangely dim) divorce lawyer George Clooney against gold-digging would-be serial (divorce) settler Catherine Zeta-Jones. He's so impressed with her take-no-prisoners style ("I'm fascinated by that creature," he mutters at one point, and the noun is no accident) that he actually falls into something like love with her.
 The Coens are juggling two tricky balls here, trying to create something in the mold of the gleefully cynical and smart comedies of Preston Sturges while at the same time parodying all the dumb-ass devices of the latter-day romantic comedy. It is not well that Not Another Teen Movie actually beat them to the slow-clapping joke, but then again I suppose this picture's aimed at a different demographic. No matter; whenever and wherever they falter here, they've got the fabulous Clooney to fall back on—he's not only game, he's manic. Zeta-Jones is so lovingly shot by cinematographer Robert Deakins that I almost forgot about those Internet-posted pictures of her, um, enjoying a cigarette during a pregnant sunbathe. (Almost, but not quite.) While it's not nearly as beguiling as the Coen's last pic, the uncanny The Man Who Wasn't There, Cruelty is still a brisk hoot. |
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| Review: 'Cruelty' is indeed intolerable... Coen brothers movie fails despite star power
Christy Lemire
Associated Press
October 10, 2003
George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones strike sparks in "Intolerable Cruelty," but the script doesn't help them do so. The cruelest cut of all in "Intolerable Cruelty" comes neither from George Clooney nor Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose chemistry and combined star wattage is so scorching, you'll feel as if your eyebrows have been singed.
 The truly heartwrenching pain comes from the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, who've written and directed an uneven romantic comedy after making their name with films both darkly comic ("Raising Arizona") and comically graphic ("Fargo").Surprisingly, they succeed for the first two-thirds -- until the running gag of marrying and divorcing, of signing prenuptial agreements then promptly ripping them up, grows tediously repetitive.
They had something great going, too, and the script (which they wrote with Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone) has the kind of witty banter that recalls the best romantic comedies of the 1940s.
Clooney's matinee-idol looks make him a natural for the role, and he's irresistibly charming as Miles Massey, the most successful divorce lawyer in Los Angeles.
Zeta-Jones, as his scheming client, Marylin Rexroth, is glamorous beyond all physical possibility -- a perfect match for Clooney in every regard.
Revenge and manipulation
Marylin's ex-husband, the wealthy (of course) real estate developer Rex Rexroth (Edward Herrmann), initially walked into Miles' office after a private investigator (Cedric the Entertainer) catches him bouncing around a motel room with a lingerie-clad blonde.
Edward Herrmann plays a philandering developer in "Intolerable Cruelty."
Despite the abundance of physical evidence, Miles wins the case for Rex with his ultra-slick courtroom skills, and Marylin ends up with nothing. To get revenge, Marylin marries gullible oil tycoon Howard Doyle (Billy Bob Thornton, who's hilariously doofy) and enlists Miles' services in drawing up the famous "Massey prenup," knowing fully that Howard won't hold her to it. All Howard can do is sit by cluelessly as sparks fly between the lawyer and his future wife.
 This touches off a seemingly endless cycle of marriage and manipulation that quickly wears out its welcome. Clooney mugs for the camera so much as the film lurches toward his slapstick conclusion, it's as if he's back in the Coens' "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" as a scheming, delusional ex-con.(Speaking of "O Brother," the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, who shot that film and worked wonders with light and shadow in the Coens' black-and-white "The Man Who Wasn't There," also shot "Intolerable Cruelty," giving the film a colorful, glossy sheen.)
The fabulous Marylin, meanwhile, is so thinly drawn, it's hard to care about her or whether she ends up with Miles, as the romantic comedy formula dictates. She's a gold-digger, she dresses beautifully, and that's about it.
Still, she and Clooney make the film tolerable, at least for a while.
"Intolerable Cruelty," a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for sexual content, language and brief violence.
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