You get the idea. But Intolerable Cruelty is the movie for you if what you’ve always wanted is a modern-day Cary Grant-type romantic comedy in which two opposites fall reluctantly in love, seasoned with dashes of that unmistakable Coen flavor:
slapstick ultraviolence: A grotesque giant accidentally shoots himself in the mouth, and it’s played for laughs.
creepy weirdness: The nightmarish boss from hell is straight out of an old Sam Raimi movie.
basement humor: This screenplay’s idea of witty banter is to have everybody say “nail your ass” over and over. A lot.
It’s biggest failing is that the chemistry between the leads only goes one way. Whether by design or Catherine Zeta-Jones’ blank performance, George Clooney plays smitten kitten to her ice queen. Clooney falls all over her, mugging like a madman (as if he were doing an impression of Jim Carrey, come to think of it), while she looks mildly bored at best.
Scott returns to France for the first time since his 1977 feature film debut The Duellists for the fluffy soufflé A Good Year. Maximillian Skinner (Russell Crowe) – hardly the most subtle of names – is a self-proclaimed asshole that inherits his uncle’s winemaking estate in Provence. His Uncle Henry (Albert Finney, who also appeared in The Duellists) raised him there, but evidently failed to impart the kinds of life lessons that would have moulded Skinner into a decent human being capable of savoring the joys of life. The ideal life as defined in the film is essentially everything that a life of leisure in Provence provides: namely, wine and women. But Skinner’s life in London is made up of much of the very same, so the solution to fixing Skinner’s poisoned soul is not to add something that is missing, but rather to subtract something: his assholeness. Skinner does sometimes manifest some self-awareness; one moment he seems to genuinely relish his life as the most venal of London stockbrokers, but the next he professes a love we’ve never before seen for his uncle and the simple life of Provence.
Russell Crowe views his handiwork, writ large upon Marion Cotillard’s derrière
Skinner’s wavering character complements a number of confusing plot holes. A running mystery is the mysterious provenance of an exceptional “garage wine” (limited batches by tiny operations, sometimes literally in a garage). Didier (Francis Dulot), the longtime tender of the Skinner vinyard, admits to deliberately producing undrinkably vile wine under the vinyard’s banner, in an attempt to run down the value of the place and hopefully disinterest Skinner in selling it. But is he simultaneously directing his real talents into the making of the mysterious garage wine? The plot thread is dropped and we never learn for sure. The cool closing credits make the film seem more entertainingly screwball than it actually was, and there’s also an utterly bewildering coda involving Skinner’s snarky assistant Gemma (Archie Panjabi) meeting a rapper and his agent. Huh?
Russell Crowe learns what’s important in life: hot French girls
I’m not sure if Crowe has the same sort of Cary Grant-like appeal for women that George Clooney has in spades, but there is plenty of eye candy for male viewers. The luscious Californian backpacker Christie (Abbie Cornish) appears on Skinner’s doorstep claiming to be his only blood relative, and thus a rival to his inheritance of the estate. French actress Marion Cotillard would later disguise herself very unflatteringly to play the frail, sickly Edith Piaf in the turgid biopic La Vie En Rose, but here she uncorks her full-on Gallic gorgeousness as Fanny (again, another of the movie’s unsubtle names – for she rather spectacularly lifts her skirt in an outdoors cafe, to the delight of the entire town and, admittedly, me). One of the funniest recurring gags is the priapic Skinner’s helpless doubletakes to any of many displays of ripe breasts and bums. But unfortunately, one of the other recurring jokes is his repeated involuntary exposures to animal dung.
Abbie Cornish as the cousin Skinner wishes he didn’t have, for more reasons than one
A Good Year takes quite a long time to get going, but does seem to pick up some comedic energy once Skinner’s cold London heart defrosts while courting Fanny in the second act. Ridley Scott can always be counted for fine art direction and cinematography, but here he wields his talents bluntly. Even the color temperature is clichéd, lest any viewers miss the point; Provence is amber-hued, and London is steely electric blue. The right choice for Skinner is never in doubt; living on a winemaking estate in Provence with a beautiful French girl is a fantasy probably every human being on earth shares, asshole or not.
David Koepp’s Ghost Town pulls at the heartstrings without being too nauseating. With a tagline that implies The Sixth Sense as a romantic comedy, its tone and subject matter are roughly comparable to As Good As It Gets: the thawing of a misanthrope with some good qualities. It mostly earns it, but the last 2-3 lines of dialog don’t feel natural — the sort of thing a screenwriter might jot down first, and then later write an entire screenplay around. It’s a real bittersweet irony for Bertram’s (Ricky Gervais) first real friend (Greg Kinnear) to literally disappear.
Poor Téa Leoni is once again saddled with an age-inappropriate love interest, as she was with Ben Kingsley in You Kill Me. I can’t picture Gwen and Bertram as lovers, but I can see them as forging a real friendship, amidst their unique situation. Their characters are well-drawn enough that I can buy his ironic wit appealing to her while her supposedly perfect fiancé may be a good human being but is utterly humorless.
