Incredibly mediocre film for Academy Award Winner

Rating: 2/10 (7 June 2001)

I must say that I cannot for the life of me figure out why people think that the movies made by the Coen brothers are so great. I have seen numerous comments that another of their films is "the best movie ever," and that movie, which I will not name, is even worse than this incredibly mediocre movie! I think that the Coen brothers put out in-your-face, insipid garbage. I have no problems with silly movies, in fact I like to suspend my disbelief for any movie that is done in any kind of clever way, but their movies really demonstrate how movies can fail to challenge the viewer even to suspend disbelief! Well, my disbelief is the praise their movies get.
"Fargo" is about a kidnapping scheme that is badly bungled from beginning to end, but the real bungling is again the total artlessness of the way the story is put together and acted out. And as I wrote above, the biggest "entertainment" are scenes of murder and violence that are totally in-your-face. The day is saved by a pregnant police officer, who is so sweet and kind, we just know that she will get her man. Yet neither her portrayal nor any of the other portrayals of people from the Great Lake states are very effective. It's not that they aren't accurate, because they are, and this adds to the boredom of the movie - they almost never express emotion, they never get out of their ordinariness, neither when people are brutally murdered nor when one of the officer's former male friends has personal problems. No, life goes on for these people regardless, and what is entertaining about that banal sameness? Finally, the portrayals in the movie are just too cute, at least for me.
What makes a lot of movies work is that their characters have transformations, they learn something from their experiences, they go from bad to good or vice-versa, or undergo some kind of change. And that is yet another reason why this movie fails in my opinion, after all the murders and other actions, no one learns anything at all! The man who arranged the kidnapping learns nothing, the murderers learn nothing, and life just goes on as it was!