Film criticism can be a nightmarish profession to follow: one is subjected day after day to movies which at best are mildly differing retreads of the already seen, and at worst will involve Mel Gibson or J-Lo or Robin Williams. Every once in a blue moon, though, redemption arrives in the form of a new Coen brothers’ movie, and suddenly you’re reminded of the wondrous and limitless possibilities cinema has to offer.
Intolerable Cruelty, a batty romantic screwball comedy in the Billy Wilder/Howard Hawks tradition, is easily the Coens’ most evidently commercial and user-friendly movie to date, and will almost certainly be their highest-grossing. Not that there’s any trade-off at all in wit, ingenuity or humour. George Clooney, by now a Coens regular, stars as Miles Massey, a sleazeball, gigantically successful Beverly Hills divorce attorney, who crosses swords with Catherine Zeta-Jones, inspirationally cast as – you’ll never guess – a shameless, gold-digging serial divorcee. They initially meet while her latest millionaire husband has hired his expert services to crush her crippling divorce suit – and despite the obvious romantic complication you might expect from any movie that stars Clooney and Zeta-Jones, he whips her ass in court. However, his troubles haven’t even started...
Thus unfolds a typically fantastical, multi-layered and downright insane piece of film-making, with all the richness and variety we’ve come to expect from the good siblings, from Billy Bob Thornton’s dwarfish hunchback yokel tycoon to Cedric The Entertainer’s psychotic turn as a private eye. It can’t be gainsaid, either, that Intolerable Cruelty is boosted hugely by what could be said to be career-high performances from both of the leads. Neither lacks for old-school matinee-idol magnetism, and their presence will hardly be a huge hindrance at the box-office.
Like anything the Coens have done, it would be remiss to expect Intolerable Cruelty to reveal the full extent of its charms on one viewing. But even on one viewing, this is a runner for film of the year.