Quirkiness for quirkiness' sake

Rating: 2/10 (5 March 2011)

I used to have a high opinion of critically acclaimed Oscar- nominated movies...key words USED TO!...A long time ago in a movie-watching galaxy far, far away. Of course this back when I was too young to know any better. Much as I despise most acclaimed films that come out now and think that better ones came out when I was growing up, I can still pick out overrated tripe from the "good old days" and FARGO (1996) is definitely overrated tripe! FARGO is actually a film that I like to reference when a movie like THE DARK KNIGHT (another overrated piece of trash) comes out because FARGO is one of the first examples of a film where I realized that EVERYONE that praised it so highly back in the day could NOT for the life of them truly justify WHY it was so great! With THE DARK KNIGHT, at the very least fans of that flick can point to the one good thing about it and that is Heath Ledger's performance (but nothing else).
Pretty much every review I recall hearing about FARGO used sweeping generalizations to describe it and simply seem to use the excuse that just because of the fact that it was novel for the lead character in a big (directed by Coen Bros.) crime drama film was (A) female and (B) pregnant, and (C) a cop, that automatically makes it groundbreaking and a modern masterpiece.
But the simple fact is...there is nothing to Frances McDormand's character, nor William H. Macy's, for that matter. How in the heck McDormand won the Oscar for making barf jokes, sounding stupid, and literally doing nothing for her short screen time (Macy had more than her, seemed like the real central character, and somehow he got tagged for a SUPPORTING nom to her LEADING nom and win) is beyond me. Macy is a tad better, but in the end came across just as emotionless and empty. And the Midwestern accents? EVERY character sounded the same! Every character is treated and acted like a caricature of real people (based on a true story), but none of them (well, save perhaps one in the end) left any kind of impression with me. The Coen's 3 previous big films BLOOD SIMPLE, RAISING ARIZONA, and MILLER'S CROSSING (their true best film) all had their character quirks and strangeness, but the characters in those films all had real personality, depth, and at the end of all 3 of those films, I actually drew something important from them.
The ONE authentic scene in FARGO is actually the opening one when Macy meets with prospective kidnappers Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare to map out the plan to kidnap his wife so he could use the ransom money to solve his financial problems, but from there on, it's all downhill! Then after that, it's just a bunch of quirky, go-nowhere, slow- moving vignettes, some of which have nothing to do with the story, and even the ones that supposedly do are dominated by the annoyances of the characters (overdone) Midwestern accents and just making boring idle conversation, with the actual plot points coming across as distractions...Yeah, we get it, Coens...solving crimes in real life is boring...you proved it!