Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Dear Rex Reed, I hate you and I hate your ASS FACE.
Excerpt from Reed's "review" of the new Coen brothers film:
Just Intolerable
I took home nothing from the alleged comedy Intolerable Cruelty except a pounding headache. This dim-witted, mean-spirited and brain-dead calamity should surprise no one. It’s a labored farce written, produced and directed by the lucky, indestructible and only mildly talented Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel (I forget which one does which), who hit pay dirt with Fargo and have been digging unsuccessfully ever since to hit more. They finally hit rock-bottom with the abominable and grotesquely out-of-control O Brother, Where Art Thou?*, proving that whatever their strengths, comedy is not one of them. That doesn’t seem to deter these cool, misguided dudes (or the fools who back their projects with actual money, like Brian Grazer) for more than a few years at a time. According to the press notes, Intolerable Cruelty was eight years in the planning; it seems to have been completed in fewer than eight hours, including George Clooney’s latte breaks. How do these fakes do it? Who among us can know?
*Reed called OBWAT? one of the worst films ever made.
The rest, if you dare, is here, although it's basically just a plot summary and a claim that George Clooney "still can't act", and then a witty bit of wordplay in which he suggests that the title refers to the way the film treats its audience.
UPDATE: A different take on Clooney from The Village Voice's Michael Atkinson:
"Zeta-Jones is merely ravishing, but Clooney owns the film. Ordinarily best at sardonic, man's-man confidence, he strides through Intolerable Cruelty with fantastic screwball zest. To see Clooney tenderize, season, grill, and serve this ham hock of a role is to see an old-fashioned virtuoso in perpetual motion. His restless artillery of double-takes, baffled winces, fake smiles, stunned glares, tongue-on-teeth inspections, and zealous line readings might make up the ripest lead perf in a Hollywood film since Cary Grant's in Arsenic and Old Lace."
posted by Linus |
8:02 AM
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