Good but not great comedy

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2009)

I watched this movie with my friends in the Kinepolis theater few days back. Frankly speaking I was simply curious and kinda influenced others to watch this one over "The Day earth stood still" and "Australia" because of its impressive casting. When we got out of the hall we all were discussing nitty-bitties of the film and we asked each other "do you like it?", everybody said "yes" but then the extra enthusiasm was missing in saying that. I personally believe that tells the story.I don't think anybody would dislike it but it could have been better. It is hilarious, okay, that was also the plot but can it not be made more comical? Individually all characters played their roles pretty much as expected to their acting images, specially John Malkovich and George Clooney were at their best. Frances McDormand as Linda Litzke becoming crazy to get her beauty operations is as believable as Brad Pitt with his rather shorter role trying to spy on the Osbourne Cox aka Malkovich. Specially the last conversation between two CIA officials played by J K Simmons and David Rasche was extremely laughter provoking and I cannot but help to give some part of it (not word to word) Simmons: What did we learn from it? Rasche: I don't know sir, perhaps you can tell. Simmons: We should not repeat the mistake we did...a pause....only if we knew what did we do wrong in the first place. So in my view Coen brothers did a good job after "No Country for Old Man" but may be they could work little bit more to create more plain comedy rather than "intelligent" comedy to get that extra "wow" from the viewers.