Intolerable Cruelty is the 10th movie directed by the brothers Coen and, while it may not be an instant classic like Fargo and The Big Lebowski, it is a great comedy farce with many, many laugh-out-loud moments, some characters that will live forever (Weezy Joe anyone?) and it's littered with great performances.

Clooney's turn as indomitable yet bored divorce lawyer, Miles Massey, is a joy to behold. The Coens have conspired, once again, to make a Clooney character a narcissistic yet insecure buffoon. This time round he's obsessed with his teeth, in O Brother, Where Art Thou? it was his hair. Exactly what are the Coens trying to do to poor old George? Clooney's sense of comic timing is perfect and when you combine that with the Coen's words you are pretty much guaranteed a huge belly laugh or two. Clooney, for my money, is fast becoming one of the most interesting, talented actors in Hollywood today. He is infinitely watchable in everything he's in.

Catherine Zeta Jones puts in a good performance as serial divorcee, Marylin Rexroth (Doyle-Massey). She oozes sex appeal (as Massey puts it- "an athlete at the peak of her powers") but I'm not quite sure about her accent. At times it felt like the Welsh lass was using an American accent and at others her usual voice. She is convincing as a walking man trap. She has beauty sure, but more importantly she infuses her character with the notion of a scheming, brilliant mind (the twist is inspired). Also, the chemistry between the two leads is believable if not as incendiary as the, by now famous, Clooney/Jennifer Lopez combo in Steven Soberbergh's Out Of Sight.

The supporting cast of characters is an embarrassment of riches. Cedric The Entertainer is perfect as Gus Petch the ass-nailing private detective. Edward Hermann is great as the adulterous, train-obsessed Rex Rexroth. Richard Jenkins returns for his second successive Coen movie in his second successive role as a lawyer. As the Coen's have said, if they want a lawyer they call Jenkins. The camp concierge, Heinz The Baron Krauss Von Espy (Jonathan Hadary) will have your sides splitting (especially the "hammer on fanny" line). Oh, and what can be said about Billy Bob Thornton? Seems clear to me that he's going to spend the rest of his career simply eating up scenes and stealing shows. He puts in an excellent, hilarious performance as Howard D. Doyle (of Doil Oil no less) and is probably THE stand out memory from the movie for me. And what of the aforementioned Wheezy Joe? An asthmatic hitman played with some verve by Irwin Keyes. Howeve, I was expecting more of Geoffrey Rush's character, Donovan Donaly who opens the movie in a great scene and then disappears only to later return for about 30 seconds of screen time. Rush's performance is not at fault, I just wish he had more screen time. All in all a terrific ensemble.

It has to be said though, that it doesn't feel like a Coen movie per se. Perhaps due to the fact that it was not solely written by Joel and Ethan Coen (screenplay credits being shared this time out with Matthew Stone and Robert Ramsey), but definitely NOT because of any crazy "selling-out" accusations. The script has some very definite Coenisms, they've made their mark on someone else's screenplay for sure, yet it does lack a certain je ne sais quoi. We've seen Coen slapstick, goof-ball comedy before, and perhaps done better, in Raising Arizona and, to some extent, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and they were, and remain, unmistakably Coen brothers movies.

An enjoyable romp from beginning (a quite beautiful credit sequence) to end, I can't wait to see it again! Where it sits in the Coen canon is hard to define. Is it is as good a movie as The Big Lebowski? Definitely not. Is it more enjoyable that Blood Simple? Maybe. Now we have 10 Coen movies, maybe now is a good time to draw up a top 10...

One of the few things that isn't bogus here is the pulchritude of its two leads. George Clooney gazes ardently upon Catherine Zeta-Jones; she smoulders back at him; and the audience gawps at both of them. We can't help it. There hasn't been a screen partnership this good-looking since Clooney and Julia Roberts in Ocean's Eleven, and before that since Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out Of Sight. (There seems to be a pattern here). In his strongest bid yet to emulate the inhibited suavity of Cary Grant, Clooney plays Miles Massey, a super-successful divorce lawyer who takes one look at his client Rex Rexroth's gold-digging wife Marilyn (Zeta-Jones) and suddenly hears the strings of his heart go zing. Nevertheless, professional interest prevails, and Miles bounces Marilyn's divorce suit right out of court: she's not getting a red cent from Rexroth.

Miles's pre-eminence in his field is down to the famous "Massey pre-nup", a contract so watertight it's never been bested in a trial ("They spend an entire semester on it at Harvard Law"). Marilyn, though smarting from her last reversal, hires Miles to draw up a "Massey" in preparation for her next patsy, a Texan oil tycoon (Billy Bob Thornton), whose millions she wants to finagle. Miles obliges, and looks on with one trickster's admiration for another as the duped tycoon eats the pre-nup document in front of his wedding party - that's how deeply Marilyn has conned him of her "love". But she turns out to be playing a more fiendish game than even Miles could have conceived, and by the time this devil in a red dress has shown up in Vegas, the plot is corkscrewing furiously.

The odd and paradoxical thing about the film is how straight the Coens play it. There is no genre hitherto that these arch pasticheurs haven't bent and twisted out of shape, no mood they haven't ironised with their own facetiousness, and there was no reason to think they'd approach Intolerable Cruelty any differently. Yet, perhaps because screwball comedy is itself a heightened, stylised form of narrative, the resulting movie seems strangely impersonal. The last time they did screwball was The Hudsucker Proxy, a film even Coen fans apparently dislike. I wasn't crazy about it, either; but, with its visual trickery and freakish atmosphere, it did at least look recognisably theirs. Unusually for them, the script of this latest also credits two co-writers, Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, which may have diluted the fraternal spirit, and their cinematographer Roger Deakins lights Clooney and Zeta-Jones as if for a Vanity Fair cover; their looks hardly need flattering, yet they're lent the sheen of demigods.

But come on, you might say, admit at least that it's funny. Certainly, it has comic moments, and at one late stage in the press screening it caused a small riot of mirth. I liked the courtroom scene where Marilyn's lawyer (Richard Jenkins), hopelessly outfought, raises an objection to Clooney's line of questioning. "What is it?" asks the judge. "Er, poetry recitation?" he offers weakly. And there's a scene-stealing moment when a French concierge is asked to swear an oath on the bible by a court clerk. "Mais bien sur," he minces. "No maybes!" snaps the judge.

Yet these jokes stand to one side of the movie; they don't feel properly integrated, and they never build, as great comedies do, into a rhythm. The big laugh at the end, involving a monstrous hitman named Wheezy Joe, is smart enough, but it comes in the middle of some very indifferent farce, the sort one might have expected the Coens to despise.

Maybe they do. Intolerable Cruelty feels like a movie that's intended to break into the mainstream. Have they grown tired of being merely cult entertainers? Their signature effects - sly movie in-jokes, visual hyperbole, baroque dialogue - are mostly held in check this time, and the performances also bespeak a perceptible air of restraint. Nobody will object to the glowing presences of George and Catherine, but neither of them is really stretching the comic sinews here. Clooney, immaculately groomed in suit and tie, has a preening, nervous vanity, and his trademark tic is to check his pearly whites in the mirror - a variation on his hair-obsessed convict in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Zeta-Jones has never looked more alluring, though she's hardly a comedienne, and the accent keeps slipping (you can still hear Swansea in the way she says "slandered").

I imagine that an audience watching this without knowing anything of the Coen Brothers will be reasonably amused, but fans who come expecting a full measure of their offbeat mischievousness will be slightly disappointed. And those who have liked very little of the work outside of Fargo and Raising Arizona will find everything in place and nothing at stake. In other words, a perfectly stylish and pointless diversion.

The Coens' comedies have often been for many an acquired taste: a quirky knight's-move away from actually being funny. It's as if the stylised gestures, decor and relationships constitute a brilliantly creative commentary on the comedy genre, rather than an actual example of comedy. But this is different, maybe because the screenplay has been realised from an original draft by two other writers: Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone. Intolerable Cruelty is a movie in which the brothers' distinctive presence is quite reticent and discreet in terms of script. But the way in which they have brought these leading actors into their own orbit and groomed and instructed them in the style of a Coen brothers movie is a distinctive triumph.

Only the Coens could have handled these stars so well and elicited such pleasingly judged performances from each. George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones aren't everyone's idea of comedy performers, though I enjoyed Clooney's eccentric gusto in the Coens' O Brother, Where Art Thou? Here they shine like sleek automobiles, and Clooney has got his wacky gurning more or less under control. Apart from anything else, they are gold-medallists in the Gorgeous Olympics, an achievement borne with no false modesty whatever.

Clooney plays Miles Massey, a Beverly Hills divorce lawyer with a hardball reputation for winning mouth-watering settlements in the case of female clients, or in the case of male clients, protecting mouth-watering personal fortunes. He is a star member of a professional association called the National Organisation of Matrimonial Attorneys, Nationally - the first and fifth words showing how outrageously contrived this name is to produce their slogan: Let N.O.M.A.N. Put Asunder! He's practising in present-day Los Angeles, but with some tweaking the period could easily be the 1950s, or even the 1930s.

Miles is dynamic, forthright, with a habit of thinking out loud while his litigants submissively wait to hear how their life-stories are to be spun and rewritten for the judge's benefit - and in this he's like the motormouth attorney-at-law Freddy Riedenschneider from The Man Who Wasn't There, or perhaps Billy Flynn from Chicago. He's also extremely enamoured of his personal appearance, a lily he paints with various teeth-whitening procedures, and he's forever checking his pearly-whites in wing-mirrors or the backs of spoons.

But Miles is bored; he wants a challenge, and this is where Mrs Marylin Rexroth comes in, the fabulously beautiful, gold-digging serial spouse who makes a career out of snagging rich men and then parting them from their cash. Marylin finds herself in the opposite trench from Miles in her latest divorce case. They see in each other a worthy adversary, while fancying the pants off each other, and their repartee has oodles of zing and snap.

Intolerable Cruelty is a rarity among contemporary Hollywood comedies in that it actually has gags: clever and funny lines crafted and honed by writers who are targeting their material at grown-ups. The debonair drollery of that title sets the bar high, and keeps it high. Considering the usual deluge of romcom infantilism, this is a treat. You're almost afraid to laugh - and even slightly resent everyone else laughing - for fear of missing the next line. It would be a shame to quote anything, but the biggest laugh for me came when a prissy Harvard lawyer finds himself in a tough diner and, confronted with a belligerent and slatternly waitress, timidly asks for a "green salad". Her reply is magnificently brusque.

Zeta-Jones, however, remains an enigma. She does much better here than in her bafflingly overpraised, Academy award-winning turn in Chicago, and her Mrs Rexroth cruises around with such effortlessly superior style that she makes those four Sex and the City gals, sashaying down the Manhattan sidewalk, look like the Keystone Kops. She's the cat that's got the cream - and wants the cow and the whole farm too. In one exquisite pink trouser suit, her body ripples like an undulating letter S. And in the wedding scene, her magnificent ivory gown with delectable triple-diamond pendant necklace and matching earrings are almost too perfect. As Miles humbly observes: "Obscene wealth becomes you."

But there is surely a subtly ironic reason for casting Mrs Michael Douglas in the role. Are the Coens taking the mickey out of the girl from the valleys who made such a good marriage in Hollywood that she became almost a real-life Becky Sharp? After all, to publicise this movie, Zeta-Jones has given interviews in which she claims she will never divorce Michael - a promise for which Hollywood wives are not on oath, to say the very least of it. Did Catherine accept the role to pre-empt and disarm her critics? Or has nothing of the kind occurred to her? Whatever the truth, it gives an extra-textual frisson to an excellent performance. What a joy to find a film sophisticated and stylish, and yet funny. As far as blue-chip entertainment for the weekend goes, the search ends here. This is a date-movie with brain cells.

It's a line from screwball laugh-a-thon Intolerable Cruelty that echoes like a pre-emptive defence from the creative team who brought you such blackly comic masterworks as Fargo and Raising Arizona.

While Intolerable Cruelty is a few shades lighter than the Coen brothers' best work, any objections about lowbrow condescension are swiftly overruled in 99 minutes of high class action. What's more, let the record show that it surpasses the precedent set by Hepburn vs Grant in the case of Bringing Up Baby (1938).

George Clooney is hotshot divorce attorney Miles Massey, and Catherine Zeta-Jones his latest courtroom casualty - gold-digger Marilyn Rexroth. After stumping her efforts to fleece hubbie Rex Rexroth (Edward Herrmann), she sets about taking revenge. Oh, and oil baron Howard Doyle's hand in marriage (that's Billy Bob Thornton playing it like JR on Prozac, folks).

When Marilyn approaches Miles to outline their prenuptial agreement, he's right to smell a rat. But it's not long before the sweet scent of love is overpowering his senses.

Clooney is pitch perfect, matching Cary Grant for impeccable comic timing and deadpan delivery. Equipped with the Coens' trademark snap-crackle dialogue, he zips through the gags so fast you might actually spot his feet leave the ground.

Although lacking the whiplash tongue of Katharine Hepburn, Zeta-Jones offers a neat counterbalance, like a slow-burning flame alongside Clooney's storming performance.

The transparency of her deception can sometimes dent the credibility of their burgeoning love, although that's actually a fault of the script. Even so, it's a misdemeanour easily pardoned in a film that boasts the funniest shoot out in recent cinematic history.

The final verdict? On the charge that Intolerable Cruelty is one of the most inspired, scathing, and downright side-splitting comedies to come out of Hollywood this year: Guilty.

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?

The glaringly unfunny premise in this divorce-court fairy tale assumes that it?s gotta be a riot when the king of summary judgments (George Clooney) meets his match in a serial divorcée (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who bankrupts husbands and disbars lawyers before breakfast, right? Wrong. You cannot believe the endless number of deadly contrivances that await you as Mr. Clooney, a heartless divorce attorney who has invented the world?s most foolproof prenup, defeats Ms. Zeta-Jones, a conniving gold-digger who is in the process of dumping a kinky, philandering real-estate tycoon for everything he?s got. Ending up with nothing but the sable on her toned and tawny back, she sets out to get even by quickly marrying and disposing of a corny, redneck oil tycoon (Billy Bob Thornton). This time she?s ready for all opponents. Naturally, in the tradition of hackneyed Hollywood hokum, the two enemies fall in love and marry in kilts to the cacophony of a bagpipe band in Las Vegas.

The next morning, the divorce attorney who stopped at nothing in the past to win a case, slandering and perjuring his way through the judicial system and leaving the broken women of America for grease spots on the side of the road, now finds himself jilted by his own wife, who is a cross between a Playboy centerfold and Lucrezia Borgia. The rest is a title bout of world-class double revenge in which she breaks his heart and wrecks his career while the lame filmmakers dream up a desperate volume of dull ways to dispose of a never-ending assortment of prenuptial agreements. (Billy Bob Thornton eats his dipped in barbecue sauce.) Vulnerable, naked and in love, Mr. Clooney finally gets his long-overdue comeuppance, mugging and winking with the same kind of self-indulgent clown faces that pass for charm in Hugh Grant movies.

Thanks to Mike Fontanelli for sending this to me.

Just as Hudsucker and O Brother suffered from too intimate an identification with the directors that inspired them, so too does Intolerable Cruelty. Which is not to say that the Coens aren't up to the job of imitating the inimitable: far from it. That this is their most visually restrained movie so far echoes Hawks's fondness for a static, shoulder-level camera and uncoercive editing. The dialogue fizzes with arch wit and sexual-financial-Darwinist treble entendres ("I hope you're a carnivore, Mrs Rexroth." "Oh, Mr Massey, you have no idea.") And the lower reaches of the cast are rich with sharply drawn cameos and aptly cast character actors in the Hawks manner, even if some of their names - Rex Rexroth (Ed Herrmann), Freddy Bender (Richard Jenkins) and "Howard Doyle of Doyle Oil" (Billy Bob Thornton) - emit the giddy whiff of Paramount-era Sturges.

Miles and Marilyn circle each other like panthers from the moment they meet at a divorce negotiation, at which Miles represents Marilyn's philandering husband. Miles doesn't lose cases, even if there is clear and irrefutable videotaped evidence of husband in hotel room with hooker, as there is in this instance. Even when he falls dementedly in love with Marilyn, he doesn't scruple to divest her of everything she has. He figures he will pick her up on the rebound and frogmarch her up the aisle.

Of course, Miles hasn't counted on how cunning his quarry is. After letting him work up a crippling hunger for her ample ripeness, she shows up with Thornton's ridiculous Texan oilman and asks Miles to draw up his famously inviolable pre-nuptial agreement. Miles's jealousy soars and the games begin.

I am a die hard Coen fan. They have yet to turn me off with a film (the closest they came was FARGO, but I saw that about 2 months after its release and all through those 2 months I was told how it was the funniest movie ever made... I was disappointed, but only slightly).

I was used to having my little Coen loving community around me, so it was quite a shock when I started hearing friends and acquaintances tell me how shitty INTOLERABLE CRUELTY looked.

I had read an early draft of the script and kept trying to tell these people that it is a Coen Bros movie, filled with their brilliant zany characters and dialogue that makes them so goddamn brilliant. I still got a, "Yeah, whatever."

Maybe something had changed or their script didn't take to film, like I had seen happen with Charlie Kaufman's HUMAN NATURE script, which was a great read that translated terribly to the screen.

After seeing INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, I am yet again baffled by the Coen's talent. They somehow were able to hide an honest to God off the wall Coen Bros movie in a mainstream film, the way a parent will hide medicine in a sugary treat. In this case, the difficult child is the mainstream movie-goer who will be tricked into seeing (and appreciating) a Coen Bros movie and may never even know they were duped. Likewise, INTOLERABLE CRUELTY acts like a great dose of potent anti-biotic, pumping life and energy into the current film scene.

It has been a long, long while since I've seen a comedy play to such constant and loud laughter and applause. The theater I saw INTOLERABLE CRUELTY in was mostly full and the audience ate the movie up.

Clooney is terrific in the movie as the bored, but brilliant divorce lawyer Miles Massey. The charm, charisma and subtlety he brings to the character is invaluable. He plays every moment perfectly, proving he's one of the best leading men in the business today.

Catherine Zeta-Jones is radiant in the film. Her brown eyes shine, emoting sexuality, cunning, intelligence... and a longing. She's very much like Jessica Rabbit in the "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way" kinda way.

The supporting cast is fantastic. I miss John Goodman and John Turturro, but like the Stones say, you can't always get what you want. There is a surprise cameo from a Coen semi-regular, even though he's not known for his work with the Coens, that totally caught me off guard... look for it in the "Soap Opera on TV" scene.

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY is a great film, up to the Coen Bros standard quality. I can't see anyone with a heart and/or a sense of humor not liking this movie. The film is through and through Coen, down to the quotable lines. Hell, my audience was saying "You're gonna nail his ass!" along with the movie before it was done.

The Coens have made a movie that will succeed with audiences during it's first run better than most that came before. O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? is a great film, but its success was a fluke. A period '20s retelling of The Odyssey with a bunch of Bluegrass music? You can't tell me that's mainstream. I'm happy for them, but they totally lucked out. My favorites of theirs have made just enough money to keep them getting work.

This film a bona fide crowd pleaser. It's edgy enough to be fresh, yet the humor is appealing to the masses. The story is sweet enough to get the "Awwww" reaction, but riddled with that great Coen dark humor.

I loved the movie and would recommend it whole-heartedly to just about anyone. We all know that asshole who hates Coen Bros movies just because... We don't like that asshole, but we all know one of those cocksuckers. If you don't, consider yourself lucky. For the rest of us who enjoy great films and truly funny comedies, you can't ask for anything better than INTOLERABLE CRUELTY.

They even have a little nightmare scene in the film that is creepy as all hell! I can't help but try to imagine what a Coen Bros horror film would be like. They started in horror... editing EVIL DEAD and FEAR NO EVIL... the mind boggles at the prospect of a Coen horror film. I hope they go for it some day, like Kaufman and Jonze. We'll see.

Now I just want the next one. Comedy, drama, horror... whatever. I get very greedy with my Coen Bros movies. Their track record is second to none and I can't wait to see what comes next... I can't wait for LADYKILLERS... and if that Jesus Quintana movie ever comes to fruition, I think I'll do a happy jig and give the world a hug... ah... the possibilities...

That's it from me, squirts. I have to get to bed. Big, super-fucking-cool interview tomorrow morning. Gotta be rested up or this Shaolin master will slaughter me. I bid you a fine farewell and adieu.

Watching some old lady testifying about being made into a sex slave for her pathetic husband, who apparently sexually experimented upon her with devices designed to use spare parts from the vacuum cleaner? well? it made me cry laughing. Then there?s the I.V. Love magazine?. Which is so wonderfully wrong? or all the ?I?m Gonna Nail Your Ass? lines? I felt like I was in the room with Ravvy and Quint again!

All this talk about this being a ?toned down? Coen Brother film? I?m not sure if I entirely get. The wit and repartee is right on target. The cinematic conventions that they wield and break are as brilliant as ever. The devilish details that they sprinkle are throughout. The Raymond Chandler and Pulp aspirations they so adore are present. Their cruel torturing of their characters is ever-present. Their gifted use of wonderful music is again on display. To me? the star of the film is Too Mean Levine playing WHEEZY JOE. I mean? not since the brilliant Joe Ranft gave voice to WHEEZY in TOY STORY 2 has there been a character with a respiratory dilemma that warmed my heart or made me care so much. I think, if INTOLERABLE CRUELTY happens to catch on? then Wheezy Joe will become one of the most beloved characters in film history? Right up there with Mike Mazurski?s Moose Malloy!

As for Clooney?s Miles Massey? he?s the fucking Sam Spade of Divorce Attorneys? the Phillip Marlowe of Matrimonial Litany. Only, imagine if Cary Grant had played those Dicks. Only, that?s not entirely accurate? I?m seeing a lot of folks bringing up Cary Grant around Georgie, but that?s the cheap way out? Clooney?s part Groucho Marx here, part Cary Grant and part Ray Milland ala his LOST WEEKEND days. He?s an immaculate mess of confidence and idleness. He?s the sort of guy that can win with every dime and is just bored of the here and there. He?s ho-hum with the day to day and he?s climbed Everest so often he?s carved steps, and there?s no fun going up and down those any more. There?s some of Gable?s Peter Warne here, but also the love sappy yolk of a Mr. Smith. He?s just a delight and a wonder on-screen. There?s a texture of Preston Sturges on this character? that "I?ve been wrong for so long, I?m gonna make an exception, just cuz I can.." type of thing. Whatever, Clooney makes me giggle, in fact Richter would need a new instrument of measurement to capture my ripples from this flick. Clooney had me going throughout. I mean? that look on his face when he visited that guy, who I swear was Sam Jaffe? only that?d mean Sam Jaffe was 112, and while he looked it, I?m told that Sam died back in 1984, so either they did a cg job after scanning his corpse? or ? they found someone that bares a resemblance to Jaffe?s corpse? only kinda moving.

Then there?s Catherine Zeta Jones ? and she?s got the most luminous skin I?ve seen on screen in quite some time. You just know she?s gotta smell like a peach, though as played, you know it?s got a black pit underneath. She?s bad news? bad news in that classic, oh hell, here comes a determined woman that stirs us like Ovaltine. Her Marylin Rexroth Doyle is just a splendor? There may be no leopard per se in this flick, but she?s definitely got the Simone Simon thing going. Her eyes devour, tempt and taunt. They ask questions that only the sheets can answer. She waltzes with wit and tangos to trouble. She reminds here of Stanwyck, and in particular? she strikes me like Jane Russell did? she might not be the top heavy talent that Jane was, but she has enough curves to make ya want to slow down, cuz you know if you go too fast, you?ll jump a rail and she will laugh at your broken blazing body in the crevice below. But, ya know what? as great as Wheezy Joe, Miles Massey and Marylin Rexroth Doyle may be? it?s the whole of a Coen cast that collects my coin.

From Rush?s crazed Donovan Donaly laughing while photographing his punctured ass to Cedric the Entertainer?s ?I?m Gonna Nail Your Ass? Gus Petch, to Edward Herrmann?s train fetishist, to Billy Boy Thornton?s graduate of Texas A&M Oil retard Howard D Doyle to Julia Duffy?s terrible evil desiccated divorcee to Jonathan Hadary?s hilarious Heinz the Baron Krauss von Espy and on and on? There?s this seemingly endless cast of characters that just kill on screen. I mean, that singing preacher was the scariest thing I?ve seen, till the kilted one. How anyone could go to this movie and think it is a toned down whitewashed version of a Coen flick, I?m not entirely sure.

All I do know is that it rules, as do all the Coen films. These guys have a knack of just owning every second they command of my time. Again, Roger Deakins is just in a class all his own. While definitely not as overtly showy as say? his THE MAN WHO WASN?T THERE or O, BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? I dare say, the way he shot windshields on moving cars in this film were just beautiful. And that?s when you know you?re dealing with a genius? when he can take the ordinarily mundane and bring it to life.

Unabashedly commercial, crowd-tickling stuff, this dazzling screwball comedy ? following proudly in the footsteps of Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder ? stars George Clooney at his most charming and Catherine Zeta-Jones doing what she does best (however little that is) in an immediately accessible story about avarice, divorce and love, in that order.

Tight as a drum, glamorous and exquisitely funny, this one should earn them enough cash to make five more offbeat minor masterpieces like The Man Who Wasn?t There ? and the Coens deserve that as much as we do.

While the leads are every bit as charismatic as you?d expect, with Clooney on ?Dapper Dan Man? form as the Cary Grant-esque Massey and Zeta-Jones showing an admirable facility for old-school quickfire patter, the movie is peppered in typical Coen style with top-notch turns from character actors (Billy Bob Thornton, Geoffrey Rush) and cameos from striking bit-part players with freakish physiognomies.

Think about the ?funny lookin?? scene from Fargo and multiply it to the nth degree: there?s a surly blue-collar waitress who bristles at a snooty request for a green salad (?What other fuckin? colour is it gonna be??), an asthmatic gangster called Wheezy Joe and an effeminate, poodle-carrying baron whose courtroom testimony must surely be one of the funniest scenes committed to film. Ever.

In fact, there?s so much musicality in the lightning-quick dialogue, you?d almost think you were watching a song-and-dance number from the golden age of MGM. Key to the action is shady private eye Gus Petch (played by the improbably named Cedric The Entertainer), whose catchphrase ?I?m gonna nail yo? ass? runs through the film like a leitmotif and finally provides the payoff.

And, like a musical, the film counterpoints major notes with subtle tones, providing broad laughs with its almost slapstick routines, while at the same time satirising the modern concept of love and the horrible commercialisation of the marriage industry ? from the garish kitsch of a Vegas wedding chapel to the mercenary combat of the divorce court.

For longstanding Coen fans, the only disappointment might be that it?s not as visually flashy as we?re used to, but one suspects this was a noble sacrifice to avoid frightening off mainstream viewers.

But watching this film, and seeing such a superb script brought to life, one can only wonder why no other star-driven romcoms made today ? pay attention, Jim Carrey ? are so finely-tuned, smart, sophisticated and memorable.

If the masses don?t take to this, there?s no hope for any of us. After all, how can you not love a movie that has a lawyer objecting on the grounds of ?poetry recitation?, a wealthy fish trader who?s so powerful he is tuna, or that features a magazine called Living Without Intestines?

This film also marks the Coens return to a Hollywood-financed production, which I know has some people worried. While INTOLERABLE CRUELTY has some true Coen Brother moments, characters, and humor, it does not rank among the finest works (I'll let the peanut gallery argue over what those are). The fact that there are four names listed as screenwriters (including Joel and Ethan) might have something to do with what's lacking here, but more it's the sense of So What that I got while watching it. Sure, I was glad to see the Coens reunite with two of their best leading men (George Clooney and Billy Bob Thornton); yes, I was glad to see Catherine Zeta Jones looking sexier than I've ever seen her; of course, supporting players like Geoffrey Rush and Cedric the Entertainer absolutely nail their performances. But something's missing here, and I think most of you will agree.

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY is sort of the opposite of a bedroom sex comedy; its a serial divorce romp. The film opens with Geoffrey Rush's television producer Donovan Donnelly (you'll notice many "clever" names in this movie) walking in on the tail end of his wife cheating on him. He is clearly in the right when divorce time comes, but he's no match for superstar lawyer Miles Massey (Clooney), a suave, well-dressed man with blinding white teeth (which he is constantly checking out in any reflective surface available), Massey takes Donnelly for all that he's worth against all odds. Next we meet Gus Petch (Cedric) a private dick whose specialty is barging into bedrooms with a video camera and capturing cheating husbands in compromising positions. His slogan: "I'm gonna nail your ass!" Indeed. In this case, Gus barges in on the hotel room of one Rex Rexroth (Edward Herrmann), extremely rich husband to Marilyn Rexroth (Zeta-Jones). Unfortunately for her, Rex hires Massey and screw her out of a single cent. Needless to say, Marilyn is royally pissed and she begins to hatch a plan to crush and humiliate Massey. He of course is madly in love with her.

I don't want to get too much deeper into the story because there are some genuine surprises and plot twists that are worth preserving. They involve Thornton, who plays Marilyn's next rich husband, a Texas oil baron named Howard Doyle (of Doyle Oil; see how clever that is?); and a legendary document known only as the Massey Pre-nup. Clooney shows an extraordinary range here. He's going for broke. His heretofore unseen comic timing is perfect, his machine-gun delivery is a knock out, and his body language is screamingly funny. Zeta-Jones is also a live wire in this role. She simmers with evil-doing more than she boils over (which is good). I want to talk more about Thornton's performance, which at first seems like a little too generic cowboy. It isn't until much later in the film that you realize the brilliance of his work. You'll see, you'll see.

The problems with INTOLERABLE CRUELTY lie in its second half. Some of the attempts at humor simply die. There's a courtroom exchange between Clooney, his associate, and a client about appearing before a certain judge that isn't funny for one second and goes on far too long. There are sequences involving a marital lawyers convention in Las Vegas that are drawn out and added nothing to the film. My feeling is that this could have been as bile-filled and vicious and WAR OF THE ROSES. Instead, we get a very PG-13, watered-down piece that turns goodie-goodie far too quick.

There are some classic Coen elements here to be sure. An asthmatic hit man named Wheezy Joe, a prancing European concierge, and a great cameo by a certain BUBBA HO TEP/EVIL DEAD star that is doubly riotous if you know a little about his acting history. But something isn't clicking here. Maybe things are moving too fast or the lines are too silly, but more than that, the movie is missing dark edges and subtle nuances we've come to expect from such master fillmmakers as the Coen Brothers. As much as you need someone to cheer for, you need someone to root against. And just when you think you've found that person, they go schizo on you and turn nice. Where's the fun in that? INTOLERABLE CRUELTY is hardly painful to sit through. There are so many attempts at humor per minute that a few are bound to make to chuckle; I know I did. But I couldn't escape the feeling that these folks were trying way too hard to make me laugh. Still, the top-notch talent involved in the making of this movie keeps it from falling flat on its face. Coen devotees will be both pleased and disappointed. Fair-weather fans may consider skipping this one. I was going to begin the review by saying I was torn, but the fact is I shouldn't be by a film by these two directors. This could have been great, and it simply isn't. But that doesn't mean it's not worth seeing. Maybe I am torn...

Thanks to MMM@ for the tip off!