I think the Coen brothers should make more screwball comedies

Intolerable Cruelty

I was browsing Netflix for a romantic comedy because I was going to see a film by myself and randomly felt like one. Then I stumbled upon “Intolerable Cruelty”, a romantic comedy by the Coen brothers! I had no idea they made such a film, and Catherine Zeta-Jones’s sexy red dress paired with George Clooney’s sexy white hair were only the icing on the cake.

Unsurprisingly, the film was exactly to my tastes. Other people seem to prefer the more serious Coens like “A Serious Man” or “No Country for Old Men” or the more absurdly funny Coens like “Fargo” or “Burn After Reading”, but I think “Intolerable Cruelty” is one of their masterpieces. Sure, it doesn’t have the subtly of “A Serious Man” or the amazing script of “Miller’s Crossing”, but “Intolerable Cruelty” is as wonderful as the screwball comedies by the great masters, (almost) in line with “His Girl Friday” and “The Shop Around the Corner”. The main ingredients of all of my favorite screwball comedies are there: two characters who are made for each other ever since the first second they lay eyes onto each other, and fight a snappy, quick-paced gender war before they are finally able to get serious about each other. In this case, the couple is also unreasonably attractive and is oozing sex appeal, even when taking into consideration how George Clooney’s character is a little bit of a wimp who is obsessed with the whiteness of his teeth.

One of the most brilliant moves of the film is how it reiterates some of its running jokes (“You are exposed!”). It may be cheap and silly but just a simple repetition of a favorite line makes the final scene have a huge impact, giving a fun conclusion to an otherwise almost sappy ending.

It has always baffled my mind why screwball comedies used to be so popular but modern romantic comedies appear so lame in comparison. Is it because fast-talking comedies are out in general? Are people out of ideas when it comes to making puns? Are puns outdated? Does it have something to do with rising feminism which dislikes gender wars in general? (If so, aren’t modern romantic comedies much more sexist in the first place?) What I find beautiful about screwball comedies is precisely that man and women appear as equals when it comes to wits, and “Intolerable Cruelty” is a very good example of that. Of course, they are equally prone to making decisions with their heart at the end of the day. It’s totally up my alley.

In the end, I may not have written much about the film, but great comedies must be watched, not analyzed to death. It’s like “Raising Arizona”, another film which I have only grazed on the surface – but how I love them!

Now for the hail of bullets:

• Recently, I have been re-watching films such as “Tropa de Elite” and of course all the films we purchased on blu-rays. I finally updated the index site in preparation of a hiatus on this blog, but then I look at my Netflix queue and see so many films I want to see. Argh!

• I actually think that Catherine Zeta-Jones has a somewhat strange face, but she is the only actress of this generation who can pull off the femme fatale. The mere concept of femme fatale seems outdated today… is this another female emancipation thing?

• Considering how much the film completely fell under my radar, I am wondering if other Coen brothers comedies are just as great. With that said, I suspect that the Coens directed this movie out of necessity or something – it really doesn’t sound like their usual stuff.