Intolerable Cruelty (15)

Miles Massey, a successful divorce lawyer, meets his nemesis; a cynical, beautiful gold-digger. He defeats her in court, but she then asks him to validate her next marriage with the unbreakable Massey pre-nuptial agreement, which ensures she gets nothing no matter what happens to the marriage. As her fiancé is a rich buffoon, Massey is baffled, until her wedding day when her plan is revealed in all its venal brilliance. Naturally, he falls for her, but how can two arch manipulators ever trust each other?

This film is achingly close to being some kind of classic. Catherine Zeta Jones is jaw-droppingly sexy, and she and George Clooney ought to make a perfect screen couple. The script is extremely witty in places, and for the first two thirds the plot manages to seem both surprising and inevitable. The film has a unique and apt visual style, as you would expect from the Coen brothers, whose previous films include Fargo and O Brother Where Art Thou?. So why does it feel like such a disappointment?

The problem is that the film-makers seem contemptuous of the genre they're working in. The script (which, incidentally, wasn't written by the Coens) contains the blueprint for a classic screwball comedy, with romance, quickfire dialogue, and plot twists. Massey and Marilyn are two witty, beautiful people who have conquered the cynical world they live in, and dream of something more meaningful.

However, each time we start to engage with the characters, the Coens seem to take a step back and amuse themselves by highlighting the silliness of the conceit. So as we get further into the film we are treated to an increasing range of bizarre-looking characters, expressionistic scenes and juvenile slapstick at key moments. Of course these elements are Coen signatures, but crucially here (unlike in, say, Fargo) they disengage us from the story, and kill any momentum.

In this film, where we desperately want to suspend disbelief and root for our stars, we leave the cinema feeling slightly cheated. Intolerable Cruelty is probably worth seeing once, but not one to take home to show the parents.

David Haviland, December 2003