Intolerable Cruelty Reviews

Excellent in every aspect!!

When you have two of the most swarve actors playing off each other then you are bound to be onto a winner.

George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones are the alternate in finesse in this battle of love vs money. From the very first moment that Miles, George's character, and Marilyn, Catherine's character, meet you know that each character has completely different agendas. As Miles tries to woo Marilyn the audience is taken for a ride of hope and dispare, of will they, won't they get together. Just when you think that things have finally worked themselves out another spanner is thrown into the works.

I expect to be adding this to my DVD collection, excellent in every aspect!!

Excellent Old School Humour

I'm not sure what the other reviewers here didn't like about this film, as most of them didn't ellaborate. But this is a good film and definitely worth a watch. The film takes a step back from the pace of modern hollywood and revisits a time were men wore impecable suits and women wore slinky cocktail dresses oozing sex appeal. Clooney pulls off a superb performance as the fast talking, hard-nosed lawyer lead - often resembling but not plagiarising Cary Grant. Zeta Jones, although a tad wooden, plays the lead femme fatale perfectly. This is a great 'sunday afternoon' style romcom, definitely worth a watch, especially if you're in the mood for an old black and white movie but appear to have seen them all!

The Coen Brothers enter the mainstream

Intolerable Cruelty is the story of Miles Massey, a successful, bored divorce lawyer looking for challenges, and perfect teeth. Onto his horizon comes Catherine Zeta-Jones, playing gold-digger Marilyn Rex-Roth, a woman after his own heart and cash. Divorce suits follow, and cupid tries to dodge the pre-nuptial agreements that seem to accompany every proposal.

This is a marvellous film, following in the footsteps of the great screwball comedies of the forties made popular by Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Clooney and Zeta-Jones are fantastic as the cynical pair slowly learning to love. They really do have chemistry together, and both seem to be having a great time. We all know now that Clooney isn’t a man afraid to ridicule himself, but who would have thought that Catherine Zeta-Jones could mock her own star image so gracefully.

The supporting cast is, as you would expect from a Coen brothers film, wonderful, with supporting roles for Geoffrey Rush and Billy Bob Thornton among others. Especially funny is the wheezing hitman played by Irwin Keyes. The production values are high, making this a glossy, attractive picture with a fast pace and multitude of terrific visual gags.

Coen brothers acolytes may complain that Intolerable Cruelty is too mainstream, but when a tired format can be brought to life with such joy and fun, who really cares? This is a must see, so what are you waiting for? Go see it.

I can't confess to being Catherine Zeta Jones' or George Clooneys biggest fans but this was a quite enjoyable movie. Clooney turns in an amusing comedy role and Jones looks every inch the glamorous female co-star. Billy Bob Thorton also puts in a light-hearted role. If you want Mills and Boon look elsewhere, if you something to lighten the mood and not make you reach for the sick bucket then you could do a lot worse than this.

While George Clooney was excellent this had none of the pace or humour of the screwball comedies such as Bringing Up Baby that it attempts to emulate. Less emphasis on the look and more on the central relationship would have made a huge difference. Catherine Zeta Jones had nothing to do except looked gorgeous which made the central love affair rather hard to accept. Not as funny or as sexy as it should have been.