Intolerable Cruelty

        Catherine Zeta-Jones is beautiful. George Clooney is roguishly handsome. Their new movie, Intolerable Cruelty, is frequently absurd and very funny.
       What more do you need to know?
       Well, perhaps that it is directed by the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan (Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), who once again show themselves adept at milking laughs from the most unlikely places.
        Clooney plays Miles Massey, a smarmy divorce lawyer who cheerfully makes up the most absurd cock-and-bull stories to suit his litigation needs. Zeta-Jones plays Marylin Rexroth, characterized by both Massey and her husband (Edward Hermann) as “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.” If my companion at the movie hadn’t been the love of my life, I might agree.
        Their characters are completely amoral. While there is a great deal of talk about love, their actions mostly exploit the emotion – marrying for money (her) and cutthroat divorce litigation (him). Somehow, we care (a little bit) about them, if only because they are beautiful and at least no more exploitative than those around them.
        Massey and Marylin meet during divorce negotiations, where he is representing her husband. He is clearly stricken with her immediately; her response takes longer to arrive. Nevertheless, they are obviously a match.
        The scenes between the two are pure joy for lovers of linguistic play. Over dinner, they spar verbally, trading fragmentary questions with neither ever advancing a declarative statement. Later, she proves his equal in her lawyerly parsing of the exact language of their declarations to one another.
        They show their romantic side by invoking Elizabethan love poetry. She quotes Shakespeare (“Venus and Adonis”) to him; he volleys back a line from Christopher Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander.” Later, with Marylin on the stand in the divorce proceedings, he gives her back her Shakespeare line and she replies with his Marlowe.
        Although Marylin’s husband was caught on videotape committing adultery, Massey manages to extricate him from the marriage without her getting a dime – not, you would think, the best way to win the affection of the woman you love.
        Of course, we know they must end up together – after all, while it is pretty dark in places, it is a romantic comedy. But two more marriages ensue, along with a murder-for-hire plot and any number of comedic reversals, before the expected ending.
        Well-known faces in small parts support the major players. Geoffrey Rush gloriously munches scenery in the movie’s opening scene, then is pretty much wasted. Cedric the Entertainer’s comedic gifts have been reduced to just one line, a threat to “nail your (body part),” the repetition of which is supposed to be funny but ultimately becomes tedious.
        While the film is full of the Coens’ trademark absurdities – Massey’s obsession with his teeth, a bagpiped “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” the visual gag of Living Without Intestines magazine, an asthmatic hit man – it does not reach the artistic level of their best-known films.
        At least twice I found myself anticipating the punchline of a scene, and the biggest audience reaction came at a violent scene that can only be described as sick. Yet no one – your reviewer included – could help laughing. And even when the humor is predictable, it’s funny.
        So what if it’s not a masterpiece compared to the stars’ and directors’ previous work? For laughs, and for beautiful actors photographed beautifully, go see Intolerable Cruelty.