Monday Movie Review: Intolerable Cruelty

Intolerable Cruelty (2003) 8/10
Divorce lawyer Miles Massey (George Clooney) is famous for his winner-take-all litigation skills and “the Massey prenup” (they devote a semester to it at Harvard Law). Gold digger Marilyn Rexroth (Catherine Zeta-Jones) catches Miles’s eye when her (soon-to-be) ex-husband becomes Miles’s client. Antics ensue. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.

Intolerable Cruelty was unfairly maligned upon its release. A Coen brothers movie brings with it a certain set of expectations, and my sense is that no one quite knew what to make of this one. It’s more a screwball than a romantic comedy: I’d define a romcom loosely as a genial journey towards lovers getting together, whereas a screwball is more of a madcap journey of two lovers who are impossible together. Clooney and Zeta-Jones have the fundamental insanity of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

Of course, being a Coen product, it’s dark and cynical, with some very amusing violence and sarcastic camera angles (I don’t know how else to describe that, but you know what I mean). The comedy is mostly the craziness of marriage, lawyers, gold-digging, infidelity, the legal system, and greed, but there’s some marvelous slapstick and the funniest death since The Fantasticks. There’s also a bit of “Who’s on First” dialogue in a courtroom that had me hysterical.

Intolerable Cruelty isn’t a work of genius, but it’s a lot of fun.

(Cruel and unusual cross-post. With great legs.)