INDY REVIEWS
Score: 7 / 10 
Intolerable Cruelty
I watched the smash hit legal thriller Intolerable Cruelty the other night and can I just say 'Wow!' Easily the best film I've seen in weeks. It's the story of George Clooney, a divorce lawyer and former Batman, who finds his career unfulfilling and Catherine Zeta-Jones, a divorce-hungry conwoman who finds herself married to Michael Douglas. The two engage in (obviously brief) battles of wits, each trying to trick the other into marrying them, then signing pre-nuptial agreements, then discarding the agreements, then divorcing and so forth. It's an absolute hoot. Eventually, Clooney, bored with the film, grows a beard and makes Syriana, while Zeta-Jones successfully bugs him for a role in Ocean's Twelve.
I may have some of the details wrong there, as I kept getting distracted by stuff on other channels and a blind pimple on my thigh. Nevertheless.
However, many critics disagree with me, calling Intolerable Cruelty the 'most facile spittoon of crud-burgling ever edited into a projectionable format' (Roger Ebert). In a way, I can see their point, what with the overwritten, unfunny dialogue and the idiotic derivative plot and the shameless mugging performances and so forth.
But I think most reviewers are blinded by the easy option offered by the movie's title. When a movie review can consist solely of a repetition of the title, then it takes almost superhuman reviewing strength to resist such an option. I bet the movie would have fared much better on the critical acclaim front if it had been called, say, The Asthmatic Hitman Who Shot Himself In The Head When He Mistook His Pistol For His Inhaler And The Theoretically Comic Events That Led To This Farcical Event. Wake up, Coen brothers!
Tags: movies, George Clooney
Begone,
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