Intolerable Cruelty

d: Joel Coen
w: Robert Ramsey & Matthew Stone, with Ethan & Joel Coen

When a Coen Brothers film succeeds, that film will be one of the best films ever made. Movies like Fargo, Miller's Crossing, and the Big Lebowski all have everything going for them. Performances, visuals, scores, story, dialogue... everything works.
When a Coen Brothers film isn't successful it still manages to push the boundaries of cinema, exceed the limits of predictability, and completely ignore convention. Films like Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy and this film, Intolerable Cruelty, while not the peak of cinema, are certainly more watchable and interesting than the latest Adam Sandler or Jackie Chan flick (it's a sad state of affairs when Jackie Chan is known as a stale genre of film).

Intolerable Cruelty's story is part legal comedy, part romantic comedy, part slapstick, and even part caper flick. It's all over the map, switching tempos rapidly, which can be difficult to adjust to.
The basics are as such... Catherine Zeta Jones is a conniving marrying woman. George Clooney is a shrewd and sharky divorce lawer. They quickly oppose each other becoming fast nemeses, but the spark of romantic interest is there. The movie plays out their intentions, which are never, ever what they seem.

It's a highly amusing movie, with Clooney working the hardest stretching his mugging capabilities (happy face, sad face, mopey face, angry face, slapstick reaction face, confused face, etc.). The duo of Jones and Clooney make a charming, if not very convincing, couple. There's little sweetness to this film, and the opening half, the set-up as it were, is some damn fun and biting commentary on the state of marriage amongst the upper class.
A forgettable film, but fun for the duration.