The Big Disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (6 November 2006)

So I fell for all the hype, and finally rented this. Turns out it's an unimaginative storyline (lifted from any number of third-rate gangster flicks) peopled with one-dimensional cartoon characters and bogged down with a profanity-laden script that doesn't even offer one memorable line. If this is what passes for a "great film" in the current Hollywood climate, that only goes to demonstrate how far Hollywood has fallen from the glory years of the 1940s through 1970s.
Jeff Bridges spends the entire movie doing his best Tommy Chong impersonation, John Goodman wastes his affable and agreeable screen presence on a Vietnam vet still fighting the war in his mind, and the rest of the characters are shabbily-conceived caricatures. The filmmakers desperately tried to make this "hip" by introducing a steady parade of John Waters-esquire "oddballs" but the ones in this film are like prefabricated oddballs they picked up on the clearance rack at Oddball-Mart, and have none of the quaint charm and humanity of Waters' characters.
The inevitable plot twists and attempts at "black humor" are so predictable you can almost draw a schematic of the film while you're watching it. When one of the characters smashes up a shiny brand-new car, you can see the "joke" coming a mile away. Sorry, but I couldn't find anything in this film with any originality or even any entertainment value. If you're unfamiliar with the Coen brothers' films - trust me on this point: the only good film they ever made was "The Man Who Wasn't There." Rent that one and forget the rest.