Story: Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) quits his job at the CIA. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with Harry (George Clooney) and plans to divorce Ozzie. Looking for a picture of his financial information, she burns a disc from his hard drive, which is misplaced at Hardbodies. It falls into the hands of two Hardbodies employees, Linda (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt), who try to blackmail Cox into paying for several cosmetic procedures for Linda in exchange for the disc.I don't think I've told you anything here that happens after the first twenty minutes, which is about how long I spent waiting for this movie to start. Whatever this was supposed to be, I doubt weirdly off-putting with occasional funny bits" was the goal.
Seriously, I don't get what this was supposed to be. A lark? Doesn't seem like enough fun for that to be true. A satire, as CBC implied to me? Of what, I reply. I know that in the past I've said things along the lines of "it's not supposed to be anything," and that remains true for certain movies. But this isn't that kind of movie. Writing and directing brothers Joel and Ethan Coen go one step beyond this time (cue up "One Step Beyond" by Madness). It's just not enough of anything to be any more than mediocre.
I'm fairly certain you could build an entire movie around the deliberate way Malkovich pronounces "memoir," Clooney's delivery of "Well, hello!" and Pitt's dancing, and I wish that they had. The overlapping plot doesn't work the way it should, it takes too long to get to the Hardbodies characters, and, though we end with the always impeccable J.K. Simmons, there's no emotional pay out because there was never any emotional buy in. The only character that seems to garner any sympathy is Richard Jenkins as Ted, the Hardbodies manager with the best boo-boo kitty face in the industry, so naturally he's relegated to a minor role. The rest of them barely earn a shrug. Well, at least when it's funny, it's very funny indeed. B
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