The worst Coen brothers movie

Rating: 1/10 (29 April 2005)

I am ordinarily a big fan of Coen brothers movies. "Raising Arizona" is one of my all-time favorites, and most of their other films are also quite good. Fargo, however, is highly over-rated. I believe it to be their worst film to date. As several others have commented, the film is simply too mean-spirited in its comedy, especially when it purports at the beginning to be a "true" story.
The best example I can think of, is the scene in the movie when the wife is tied up inside a sack and the kidnappers are trying to get her into the cabin. She momentarily gets away from them, and runs around in a panicked frenzy, blindly bumping into things, while the kidnappers laugh at her. Believe it or not, in the movie this scene is played for laughs. The movie wants the audience to laugh at this scene, and inevitably some do laugh. Laughing puts the viewer into the same frame of reference as the kidnappers, instead of identifying (as they should) with the victim. As a result, you laugh without thinking, and then feel bad about having just laughed. A very uncomfortable feeling.
Most Coen brothers movies are filled with quirky characters that have a lot of "heart." Even the bad guys end up being somewhat likable. In "Fargo" however, there are very few likable characters. Marge Gunderson is just about the only one, and even she is really too much of a cartoon caricature to feel like a real person. Yet, at the same time, the movie feels a little too much like real life to be a good dark comedy.
Dark comedies are tricky things, and I do love a good dark comedy. However, I think a dark comedy needs to feel unreal enough, in order to allow us to laugh at the naughty goings-on. Bad things can be funny, if we know they are not real. The more real bad things feel, the less funny they get. "Fargo" made the mistake of trying to portray bad things in a very realistic way, and then making fun of them. This contrasts with "Raising Arizona," which portrayed some bad things in an over-the-top cartoonish way, and remained funny. Cartoon violence is funny, real violence is not.
I say, skip this one and watch "Raising Arizona."