FILM REVIEW: Osborne Cox: Give me the CD!
Chad Feldheimer: Give me the money!
You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around, that’s what it’s all about. Well, that and infidelity all over the place, extreme amateur espionage, and aging . . . not in any particular order. This movie was a good taste of a not very common genre, the crime comedy or comedy thriller. Sure there are a lot of crime comedies but a well balanced one is uncommon. Most crime comedies seem to be a lot more crime than comedy or a lot more comedy than crime. This one seemed a little better balanced by giving us both extremes, hard core crime and rolling laughter comedy, a Coen brother specialty. This movie did score well on my tear factor scale. Tears rolled down my face from laughter a couple of times. It was very funny and enjoyable.
What truly makes this movie is the incredible cast and the off the wall roles they play. A bearded George Clooney plays Harry Pfarrer, a twitchy, paranoid, womanizer. I’ve never seen him open his eyes so wide as he did in a particular scene. He reminded me of Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The man with a thousand looks, hairdos, and characters, Brad Pitt, graces us with and yet another one as he plays Chad Feldheimer, a gym trainer. This is definitely one of his goofiest roles ever. If you’ve seen the preview, you know what I mean and yeah, the character really is like that. He delivers some of the funniest moments in the film. In a lot of scenes he is teamed up with Frances McDormand who plays a co-worker, Linda Litzke. Will Frances ever stop impressing me? I really can’t think of any poorly played role she has ever done and like Brad, this is probably one of her goofiest roles and she nails it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have two domineering characters, Osborne Cox and Katie Cox, expertly played by John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton. A character like Osborne is right up John’s ally. Recent Oscar winner Tilda is going to flourish and she has the talent to do so. Although both these roles did not stand out as much as the others mentioned, they did give solid performances. I wasn’t too crazy about Richard Jenkins role as Ted Treffon, the gym boss. It was a small role but he was just too nerdy for my taste and it didn’t seem to fit him. It was uncomfortable. But again, the overall acting and the entertaining characters in this movie really makes it worthwhile.
The story was really quite ridiculous and convoluted but it added to the humor of the film. I’ll admit, however, that some moments seemed to drag a little, but there were plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing as to what could possibly happen next. The dialogue was outdone by the acting but it was pretty good too. It was kept basic and not as elevated as it could have been given the subject matter. The cinematography had good use of varying points of view and camera angles. In summary and simply put, this is not the best work ever done by the also recently and multiple Oscar winning Writer/Director brother team, the Coens, but it is worthy of praise. I personally don’t see any Oscars being generated out of this work though. If you saw and enjoyed such flicks as Ladykillers, Fargo, Intolerable Cruelty, and No Country for Old Men, you should seriously consider this one.
Film Review By Cine Marcos
DVD: The DVD is presented in 1.85:1 aspect ration preserving the theatrical presentation of the film. The picture is complement with a 5.1 Dolby Digital audio tracks in three different languages, English, Spanish and French.
The special features are very slim in this DVD release. It only contains 3 special features, with a total running time of 21 minutes. Two of the special features are mainly about the cast. In “DC Insiders Run Amuck” and “Welcome Back George”. Filmmakers and the cast talk about their roles in the film. One thing that I found interesting in these 2 featurettes, was that they don’t include any comments by Brad Pitt. Wonder Why! The only interesting feature that I found was the featurette called “Finding The Burn”. A five minute featurette in which Joel Coen and Ethan Coen talk about their inspiration for making the film.
Release Date: December 21, 2008