Credit the cat!

Rating: 2/10 (28 November 2016)

Other reviewers have suggested that people don't like this film because there's not enough action and pointed out that it's not an action movie. If I wanted to watch an action movie, I wouldn't pick one about a singer-songwriter wandering about 1960s New York. One guy does his girlfriend a disservice by implying she's simply too low-brow to appreciate it, that it doesn't have enough action for her. It's not that she only likes action movies, it's that she doesn't like bad movies. People have written that it's darkly comedic. It isn't. There's nothing funny about this movie. The protagonist, admittedly he's not supposed to be likable, is aimless in a charmless way and really rude to his two benefactors, simply for the chance to flex his artistic temperament. As usual, the Coens have stuck in John Goodman as a completely over the top caricature. They like to stretch credulity. He must surely tire of these roles (like in Death Sentence) but it's all money in the bank I guess. Carey Mulligan does her usual hard-to-like girlfriend act. Justin Timberlake is worth watching as a wholesome folk singer and Garrett Hedlund is wasted as the enigmatic Johnny Five.
The Coen brothers still think swearing is hilarious when it hasn't been funny since the beginning of Four Weddings and a Funeral. And Hugh Grant was charming.
The cat is by far the best thing in it and doesn't even get credited in the cast. Sensibly, he spends all his time trying to disassociate himself from this ideas vacuum of a movie and disappear from the frame. The cat should get an award, the rest was awful.