Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

I was in the mood for a light, romantic comedy the other night, so I decided to rent Intolerable Cruelty starring George Clooney and Catherine-Zeta Jones. Since the movie was three years old, I had already heard plenty about it and knew that the critics panned it. I also knew that it didn't do well at the box office, which, I admit, doesn't always mean that a movie is bad. Anyway, I just wanted to watch Clooney and Zeta-Jones do their thing on screen and have a few laughs along the way so I rented the DVD.

Clooney plays Miles Massey, a divorce attorney who has gotten very, very rich over the years from handling settlements for his wealthy clients. He has been at it so long that he doesn't even need to listen to testimony in court; he knows how the game is played and he knows which questions to ask. Since all Miles has ever seen are relationships that turn out bad, he is understandably a cynic and doesn't believe in true love.

One day he gets a new client named Rex Rexroth (Edward Hermann) who is being sued for divorce by his estranged wife Marilyn (Zeta-Jones). Marilyn had hired a private investigator who filmed Rex in the middle of an indiscretion, and now stood to gain half of everything that Rex owned. The problem for Marilyn was that Miles and his assistant Wrigley (Paul Adelstein) were able to uncover a witness who swears that Marilyn was looking for a dumb, rich husband that she could control for a while and then eventually divorce for a lot of money. On the strength of that testimony, Marilyn ends up with nothing.

As the film progresses, Miles and Marilyn keep crossing paths, and soon fall for each other. They both have friends that are old, scared, and alone, and neither of them wants to end up that way, so they decide to marry each other. However, there's a bit of a plot twist in there that I don't want to reveal, so I'll have to stop my recap right here.

I have to say that I was extremely disappointed in Intolerable Cruelty even though I didn't have high expectations when I sat down to watch it. The movie was written and directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, which should have thrown up a red flag for me. The Coen brothers are notorious for taking risks on their films, and sometimes those gambles pay off big time. But when the gambles fail, it usually results in a big pile of garbage. Unfortunately, Intolerable Cruelty is garbage.

The acting was truly over-the-top -- especially Clooney's character. I know this was intentional and was supposed to be slapstick-y or whatever, but it came off as incredibly bothersome and annoying. He wasn't funny in the least and made me want to quit watching. In fact, I was only able to get through this movie by viewing it in 20-minute segments because that was all I could handle in one sitting.

Surprisingly, the decision to make Clooney ham it up in this film was the only chance the Coen brothers took. The rest of the plot was rehashed bits and pieces that moviegoers have seen a thousand times over. There was really only one plot twist, and the character's motivation wasn't sufficiently established, so the twist didn't ring true at all. I just found myself asking "Why?" when the twist was revealed, when I'm sure the filmmakers wanted me to marvel at their cleverness.

So to sum up, Intolerable Cruelty is a romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor funny. Although Clooney and Zeta-Jones both looked great on the screen, they didn't have an ounce of chemistry together, which made most of the second half of the film unbelievable.

Geoffrey Rush, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cedric the Entertainer also have roles in Intolerable Cruelty, but are on the screen so seldom that it wasn't enough to save the movie.

This film will probably only be appreciated by the most hard-core fans of Ethan and Joel Coen. I don't have anything positive to say about Intolerable Cruelty, except that it (thankfully) doesn't have a long running time. Save yourself some money and rent something else!