Someone should have told the writer-director(s) that Catherine Zeta-Jones is incapable of being cool. As brothers, they should have told each other that the production stank, as must have been evident from the read-through. The casting is is bad as the script which is very bad. Over-the-top acting decorates the whole mess, Clooney may have got away with it in 'O Brother
', but miscasting like that seldom works more than once for anyone, and besides, he was then acting lines inside real Coensworld.
Bad timing, overlong scenes, no sympathetic main character. You want George and Z-J to end up together, but only inasmuch as then the movie might fade to credits. Incidentally there are times you fear it never will. I'd have switched off at several points, but I couldn't believe they could complete this project without at least one saving grace, well, they couldn't, Billy Bob Thornton comes along to save them just one point as far as I'm concerned. Carter Burwell's beautiful music is desperately out of place. The script is littered with pretentious quotations, as if to remind us that Joel and Ethan did rather well at college. (Did they)? It pains me to write this, as I have championed these two since 'Blood Simple', but it really is a very bad exercise in wastage of studio funds.
I paused for a moment to catch my breath, (badly required so that I might deflate my expectations a little more scene by scene), and momentarily I imagined Melanie Griffith and Kevin Spacey doing this movie. It would perhaps have been better, but oh, those lines would not have improved their prospects for another job!
Even when not playing a bitch, Zeta-Jones exudes heartless shallowness, (evidence: 'The Terminal'), and it seems plain that apart from the initial promise shown in 'The Darling Buds of May', that's all she had. As actor after actor attempts to portray emotional attachment it feels more and more cringworthy. Even the dependable actors are unable to build with such insipid mortar. Nothing hangs together, then here comes Burwell again, calling passionate musical themes reminiscent of Miller's Crossing into scenes devoid of any pulse. I feel in this association he has devalued his own work, is it possible he can turn his beautiful music out at the drop of a bad line without the prime mover of a good, connecting human story? Did he even see the film before writing the original score?
Some Sample dialogue, and believe me, the Coens take credit for this: "You must leave the house because I left the gas main on that leaks", honestly, it's there in the movie, then "Whatever they're paying you, I'll pay you double". It goes on and on and on and on forever and eventually dissolves into slapstick like DeNiro doing a bad Jim Carry part. How can you have so many good ingredients and still spoil the dinner? Did Joel and Ethan really see 'Out of Sight' and 'War of the Roses' in the same week and gamble they could just join the two together with a bad glue-job? It takes more than that, at least a hint of screen chemistry. Unbearably bad, intolerable cruelty. O brothers . Shame on you.
Bad timing, overlong scenes, no sympathetic main character. You want George and Z-J to end up together, but only inasmuch as then the movie might fade to credits. Incidentally there are times you fear it never will. I'd have switched off at several points, but I couldn't believe they could complete this project without at least one saving grace, well, they couldn't, Billy Bob Thornton comes along to save them just one point as far as I'm concerned. Carter Burwell's beautiful music is desperately out of place. The script is littered with pretentious quotations, as if to remind us that Joel and Ethan did rather well at college. (Did they)? It pains me to write this, as I have championed these two since 'Blood Simple', but it really is a very bad exercise in wastage of studio funds.
I paused for a moment to catch my breath, (badly required so that I might deflate my expectations a little more scene by scene), and momentarily I imagined Melanie Griffith and Kevin Spacey doing this movie. It would perhaps have been better, but oh, those lines would not have improved their prospects for another job!
Even when not playing a bitch, Zeta-Jones exudes heartless shallowness, (evidence: 'The Terminal'), and it seems plain that apart from the initial promise shown in 'The Darling Buds of May', that's all she had. As actor after actor attempts to portray emotional attachment it feels more and more cringworthy. Even the dependable actors are unable to build with such insipid mortar. Nothing hangs together, then here comes Burwell again, calling passionate musical themes reminiscent of Miller's Crossing into scenes devoid of any pulse. I feel in this association he has devalued his own work, is it possible he can turn his beautiful music out at the drop of a bad line without the prime mover of a good, connecting human story? Did he even see the film before writing the original score?
Some Sample dialogue, and believe me, the Coens take credit for this: "You must leave the house because I left the gas main on that leaks", honestly, it's there in the movie, then "Whatever they're paying you, I'll pay you double". It goes on and on and on and on forever and eventually dissolves into slapstick like DeNiro doing a bad Jim Carry part. How can you have so many good ingredients and still spoil the dinner? Did Joel and Ethan really see 'Out of Sight' and 'War of the Roses' in the same week and gamble they could just join the two together with a bad glue-job? It takes more than that, at least a hint of screen chemistry. Unbearably bad, intolerable cruelty. O brothers . Shame on you.