Lame And Unpleasant Comedy Of Coincidences Amongst The DC Jet-Set

Rating: 4/10 (2 July 2011)

Osborne Cox is a CIA analyst who quits when threatened with a demotion. He starts to write a memoir which unwittingly falls into the hands of the none-too-bright Linda and Chad, who work at a gym. A complicated web of blackmail, surveillance, infidelity and bizarre coincidences ensue.
What has gone wrong with the Coen Brothers ? When these guys were young, they made some truly outstanding movies - I would rate Miller's Crossing in my all-time top ten. Now it seems they just slap anything together, make sure the characters are all extreme caricatures, encourage their clique of bigshot actors to mug shamelessly and then wait for the accolades to pour in. Their films have become predictable, crass and stupid when they were once original, witty and brilliant. This comedy - I didn't laugh once - is like their previous remake of The Ladykillers; full of ridiculous, foul-mouthed, harshly unlikable people with no redeeming features whatsoever. Are we supposed to root for the paranoid vain operative who chases women on the internet, the drunken fired CIA agent who hates everyone and whose reveal-all memoir the plot revolves around is worthless, either of the cheating cold-hearted wives or the jaded ageing spinster whose only goal is to be able to afford plastic surgery ? The Coens and their actors may find these people funny, but I don't, and as the story races along at a hundred miles an hour I get the sneaky suspicion that they're moving so fast to cover up the fact that they realise nobody else will. There's a ten minute subplot involving Clooney building a sex toy in his basement which is not only staggeringly unfunny, but has absolutely zero relevance to anything. Can these guys really be the same men who made the deftly hilariously clever comedies Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy ? The all-star cast of award-winning feted actors prove clearly the old maxim that dying is easy but comedy is hard as they all fall flat, assuming that if they just shout loud enough and fast enough that somehow their performance will amuse. For me the only good turn is by Rasche as the CIA sub-chief, whose explanation of the plot to his superior is a lot funnier than the actual plot itself. Only he goes for a carefully measured and timed performance, the fundamental basis of all good comedy and a lesson everyone else on the picture needs to re-learn. And that in a nutshell is what's wrong with this movie - it has no timing, no rhythm, it's just a series of unpleasant scenes which rush past very quickly. It has some funny ideas and moments, but they're just ripples in a big choppy splurge of a film with no sense of itself. I really wish I could rate this film higher, particularly since the preceding No Country For Old Men was their best movie in a long time, but this so-called comedy sucks and these guys can do much better.