just couldn’t nail this one down.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This latest Coen brothers romantic/comedy about lawyers goes decidedly
commercial and overboard on glam, maybe due in large part to the involvement
of their middlebrow producer Brian Grazer (”Parenthood”/”The Nutty Professor”/”Liar
Liar”). He produced the very ordinary crowd-pleaser Oscar winner — A Beautiful
Mind, where he altered the biographical truth for the sake of the so-called
higher business truth that schmaltz sells. If Grazer’s not the culprit
for what went wrong, then it just might be the Coens themselves reaching
out for a bigger share of the box office by slightly altering their style
to bring in the masses. They wouldn’t be the first filmmakers to ever sellout,
though there’s always the possibility they just honestly failed to come
up with a good script.
“Cruelty” is set in the posh Beverly Hills of swimming pools in almost
every house and every character in a materialistic mindset, where divorce
lawyers are reviled and revered in the same breath. What saves this anti-lawyer
film from the stench of its sitcom feel and general apathy, is the Coens
signature black humor injected into the story in small doses to stop the
tedium. What keeps it from being completely saved is that it holds back
on neutral instead of plunging forward and making this the over-the-edge
zany 1940s screwball comedy ala Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder that it
wanted to be. The Coens seem stuck trying to make the despicable characters
they are dealing with into likable fun people, as that never happened.
The film felt more bitter and dark than funny and enlightening (though
this aim might not be necessary for their films if they are just funny).
The explanation for what went wrong might just be that the Coens
took a mainstream script languishing in the vaults of Universal for around
8 years and were asked to rewrite it without directing, but when old pal
George Clooney came aboard so did the brothers. They just added their strange
brand of humor onto the main offering and I believe that’s why the script
looks so conflicted. What disappoints most is that despite two hilarious
trademark Coens’ routines that brought great laughter, that wasn’t enough
to compensate for how tired and mainstream it all felt. Though having the
chatty Baron Krauss von Espy on the witness stand at the divorce proceedings
was a real hoot, and a goofy Runyanesque hit man, Wheezy Joe, with asthma
and in need of constantly using an aspirator, made for vintage Coens comedy.
But too many of the comedy schticks felt forced and unfunny. Cedric the
Entertainer as the private investigator with the divorce crowd trade is
busy taking photos of cheaters without an ounce of tact, but his heavy-handed
antics failed to prove funny. Billy Bob Thornton’s role as an eccentric
marrying rich Texas oilman never struck oil. Geoffrey Rush had an underwritten
part of an unimportant daytime TV producer who loses everything in his
divorce, despite catching his wife in the act and getting a Polaroid. There
wasn’t much that was funny about how that scenario played out. Also, by
the time the film tries to predictably rehabilitate its greedy and unfeeling
beautiful people leads who are always in conflict, George Clooney and Catherine
Zeta-Jones, too much damage had been done to make the happy ending seem
anything but tacked on.
One of the best divorce lawyers in Los Angeles is smoothy Miles Massey
(George Clooney), who thinks he’s even smoother since he just got his teeth
whitened to perfection. The hot-shot lawyer, who is all polish and slickness,
is shown at the top of his game getting impossibly good results for his
clients by using unscrupulous tactics to win at any cost and hooting it
up at how clever he is for his loyal nerdy assistant Wrigley (Adelstein).
Massey feels proud of himself that he cleaned out the TV producer and made
his wife who was screwing the pool man a very wealthy woman. Next he goes
up against a very beautiful woman named Marylin Rexroth, who got from her
PI (Cedric the Entertainer) video proof that her real estate wealthy hubby
Rex was in a motel with a hot number. Though attracted to Marylin, Massey
still does her in by hiring her same PI to illegally break into her place
and photostat her address book. From there he’s able to get Baron Krauss
von Espy to testify she was a gold digger who once told him to introduce
her to a silly rich man she will have no trouble divorcing and grabbing
his fortune. The court rules against Marylin and she is left broke but
vows to get even with the fancy shyster, who has fallen in love with her
curvaceous bod and her puckered red lips and exposed eye-popping cleavage
and silky smile. In otherwords, he has fallen in love with a woman whose
credo is to use the power she has over men to take them for a sucker’s
ride.
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The silky lawyer is also recognized for his Massey no-loophole pre-nup
agreement, which is a safeguard advised for his wealthy clients when getting
into a marriage that might be risky. This is worked into the plot line
as Marylin marries her oil tycoon and divorces him, which leaves her open
to marry the ready-to-now-believe-love-really-exists Massey. The lawyer
has become bored and unsatisfied with his success, and is looking now for
something heartfelt. Massey’s role model whom he never before questioned
is an 87-year-old senior partner of his law firm (Aldredge), considered
the top-dog in the world of divorce lawyers, now a sick man but who still
comes to work every day because sadly there’s nothing else in his empty
life. Massey does not want to end up like his mentor, so he becomes vulnerable
for the first time as love pangs strike. The funniest scene about Massey’s
love conversion was at a Las Vegas divorce lawyer’s convention at Caesars
Palace and the noted cold-hearted divorce lawyer is the keynote speaker
giving a talk advocating the beauty of love to his equally ruthless colleagues
and he almost has tears in his eyes when speaking about what love means
to him.
There were lots of Coen brother things in the script to kvell about,
but there were more things that went wrong than right. The jokes never
developed as magnificently as they should have and the screwball comedy
never took off from all its restraints. The challenge for the Brothers
to grow and change their movie formulas is not to be questioned, but I
just don’t think this challenge to make a star-driven mainstream film worked
out satisfactorily. The Coens just couldn’t nail this one down, not because
the acting wasn’t sparkling but because the barely tolerable script couldn’t
find a way out of the dark hole it dug for itself despite all its cleverness.