Get Your Reps In: George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones Frolic Through “Intolerable Cruelty”

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

If you want to be a Coen brothers completist, their minor works can yield minor yet delightful joys. Parachute in, perform a little postmortem on a relatively forgotten title, adjudicate blame, do some reclamation if possible—all fitting tasks for a movie about a divorce lawyer (George Clooney) and a habitual divorcée (Catherine Zeta-Jones) frolicking atop failed marriages.

That’s the crux of the Coens’ Intolerable Cruelty (2003), probably one of their two least beloved films (though certainly more beloved than The Ladykillers). It might also be the Coens’ most obvious attempt at a mainstream present-tense movie—a romp of naughty early-aughts cynicism about the shallowness of rich people, all fit for a dad’s lawyer joke book.

Of course, it’s also the Coens having their fun with film history, riffing on 1940s screwball comedies of remarriage, as Clooney and Zeta-Jones, arguably the two preeminent dreamboats of 2003, flirt their tails off and play pingpong with prenups.

Intolerable Cruelty screens Thursday, Dec. 14, at the Clinton Street as part of the theater’s two-week Coen brothers series.

ALSO PLAYING:

Academy: McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Dec. 14. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964), Dec. 14. The Far Country (1954), Dec. 15-21. Eight Crazy Nights (2002), Dec. 15-21. Clinton: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), Dec. 15. Hail, Caesar (2016), Dec. 16. Blood Simple (1984), Dec. 18. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Dec. 19. Hollywood: Small Soldiers (1998), Dec. 15. Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972), Dec. 16. Batman Returns (1992), Dec. 17. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), Dec. 19. Living Room: Beetlejuice (1987), Dec. 17. Tomorrow Theater: Perpetrator (2023), Dec. 15. Piaffe (2022), Dec. 15. Earth Mama (2023), Dec. 16. Our Father, the Devil (2021), Dec. 16.