Intolerable Cruelty is a darkly hilarious, uproarious battle of the sexes with twists and turns around every corner. A movie that begins with Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" can't go wrong.
George Clooney was smart enough to realize that Joel and Ethan Coen, the men behind the new comedy, helped his movie career out when he made the deliciously absurd O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Clooney has come back to mine the comedic possibilities again with the brothers. Clooney portrays Miles Massey, a slick lawyer obsessed with keeping his teeth white and getting bored with winning every single case. As he says, he wants a challenge. Clooney's character is up for it, jumping into the role with the same manic glee he exhibited in O Brother, Where art Thou?.
That challenge presents itself in the form of the insanely beautiful Marylin Rexroth (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Her husband, Rex (Edward Herrmann), is a philandering businessman with plenty of money to line his pockets. Marylin Rexroth sues Rex Rexroth for everything he has, but Rex has Massey on his side. Thanks to Massey's incomparable skills (his prenuptial agreement is second to none), Rex wins. However, a subtle waltz of words begins between Marylin and Miles, and Miles falls in love with Marylin. Complications ensue when Marylin pops up at Massey's office with a new rich husband, and a Massey pre-nup ready to be signed.
As with his previous work with the Coen Brothers, Clooney is the star of the film. Every scene that he appears in is filled with a new neurotic facial tic, or an extra widening of the eyes. Surprisingly, George Clooney's face is nearly rubbery, twitching every which way. The bored but successful, fast-talking lawyer role is perfect for Clooney, who gives a great performance.
Zeta-Jones is, as I said, insanely beautiful in this movie as Marylin. It's no wonder that almost every man in this movie is attracted to her. Could you blame them? Her ravenous instincts and techniques betray her, but Zeta-Jones does a fine job of showing a true two-faced human being.
The other notable actors here are all quite underused in various ways. Geoffrey Rush has a role as Donovan Donnelly, another cuckolded husband done in by the Massey pre-nup, but only talks in the opening sequence. Cedric the Entertainer, as boisterous private eye Gus Petch, gets a great catchphrase and little else. In an incredibly tiny role, Billy Bob Thornton plays the next husband, Howard Doyle. Thornton is thoroughly hilarious as an oil magnate who just won't stop talking about everything. The only role that's close to substantial is given to Paul Adelstein. Adelstein plays Massey's second-hand man, Wrigley, an overemotional goof only the Coen Brothers could create and perfect.
Every time the Coen brothers make a movie, there is only one guarantee: It will be different from the other similar movies in its genre. Has there ever been a noir film about a barber? Have crime dramas always had a pregnant woman as the lead character? And The Big Lebowski is one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. Although this may be their most commercial movie (Intolerable Cruelty was produced by Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment), there are certainly more than enough touches of brilliance that only the Coens could have thought up.
This brings me to yet another reason why you should go see Intolerable Cruelty. If nothing else attracts you to this movie, maybe something will: one of the four or five funniest sight gags I've ever seen. Without giving anything away, let it be known that I'm still laughing about this gag. It appears very near the end of the movie, and I don't know that I've laughed so hard recently at a single movie moment.
Still, the Clooney/Zeta-Jones pairing should be attraction enough. With a crackling script, fast pace and great jokes, Intolerable Cruelty is one of the funniest films of the year, and one of the best films by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Josh Spiegel is an entertainment reporter for the Web Devil. Reach him at joshua.spiegel@asu.edu.
