Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

Intolerable Cruelty: 2003, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Seen on DVD (Feb. 21).
[blah blah blah spoilers included blah]
People have been bugging me to see Intolerable Cruelty since it was released, because they said they were eager to hear my opinion on this reworking of the Thirties screwball comedy genre. (I am very very fond of Thirties comedies, in case you were not aware.)
But the thing is, y’all, this isn’t a reworking of a Thirties comedy. I think you have your decades confused.

What you have here are Thirties characters in a Fifties comedy storyline … and near the end, some Seventies dark comedy plot twists.
The problem with this movie, in fact, is that the Seventies plot twists don’t really fit with the rest of the movie (I am talking about the murder subplot at the end). The story becomes too dark, and the characters are in danger of being far too unlikeable or unrealistic. The movie breaks the rules of its own little universe. Which is a surprise to me, since the Coens usually create a weird little world with weird little rules and stay very firmly within its boundaries.
The actors save the movie, though. George Clooney reminds me more and more of the 1930s Cary Grant (The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday, and The Philadelphia Story), and Catherine Zeta-Jones is a more sophisticated, sleek Barbara Stanwyck (The Lady Eve, Ball of Fire). In fact, just when things seemed to be going swimmingly in the movie, I kept shouting, “Watch out, she’s Barbara Stanwyck” and sure enough, I was right. Fortunately, my boyfriend hasn’t seen any of the above-mentioned movies so the plot twist was a surprise to him.
Not everyone recognizes and understands Thirties-comedy iconic characters. Without Clooney and Zeta-Jones, two very likeable actors, the characters might have come off as too unsympathetic for anyone to stand. The supporting cast is also very enjoyable, particularly Edward Herrmann and Billy Bob Thornton.
The storyline of Intolerable Cruelty is not Thirties-comedy-style. I suppose that the theme of marriage and divorce and remarriage reminds people of the comedy of remarriage, a very popular type of romantic comedy in the Thirties and early Forties (the last good one was probably Adam’s Rib in 1949). But couples in the comedies of remarriage did not display the level of vindictiveness and, well, cruelty that we see in this movie. The couple’s interaction reminds me far more of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies of the late Fifties and early Sixties. I wonder if this wouldn’t make as good a double-feature with Down with Love as it would with The Lady Eve.
That’s the thing: in movies like The Lady Eve or His Girl Friday you never see two conniving, scheming main characters, but one con artist and one target. Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck never were in a movie together—if they had been, a movie like Intolerable Cruelty might have been the result. But by the 1950s, neither actor played that mischievous, artful, conniving role anymore, they were too old, too well-known.
I was prepared not to like Intolerable Cruelty very much, since everyone who saw it said it was rather a letdown. It started as a very promising comedy, they said, but the ending destroyed it. Personally, I think that the filmmakers could have removed the murder subplot near the end very neatly and the narrative would have flowed even more smoothly. (Someone could do it now, using editing software, perhaps. Hmmm.) I think that subplot is what made the movie so disappointing to everyone. I felt like I knew the characters well enough not to take that particular part of the movie very seriously, but it was jarring and distracting and caused the movie to suffer.
Despite that flaw, I liked Intolerable Cruelty very much and in fact, I’m thinking of watching bits of it again before we have to send it back. Besides, IMDb says that Bruce Campbell is in there somewhere, and I want to find out where.