Burn After Reading
It's 12:06AM and I'm starting to type this review for this flick and don't even know where to start. I guess we can start with the snacks. I picked up some cantaloupe (yes I had to spell check 'cantaloupe') and some wasabi peas along the way. I also brought a water from my fridge. That was that with the snacks.
When I got there there were a bunch of little kids with their parents heading into various movies which I always find disturbing at night. I stopped in to take a whizz and had the damaging experience of listening to some guy berate his kid on the changing table while changing his diaper or whatever. All angry telling the kid to stop moving around or something. I'm like, 'Dude, you're acting like the kid is being a dick? You're the one changing your kid's diaper at 10:00PM on the 7th floor of a multiplex cinema! He should be yelling at you!' I shot the guy a look on the way out and he shrugged at me with a 'Heh. Kids... whaddaya gonna do, right?' I dunno. How bout not take your 2 year old to a movie at night, dope?!' The whole Sunday night movie scene was enough to reinforce some crooked form of agoraphobia.
Anyway! I wish I could follow up that depressing thought with a kickass movay review! But that ain't happening. Not with this mess. Jumble-wise the plot as was this sentence smooth. But let's start with the acting because this flick is chock full of movie stars!-- and each one of them was jammed in a sucky situation. Straight out star abuse. Like, take George Crooney and strip away any charm and make him look like a skinny old man. Yay. Let's take Brad Pitts and ask him to do a bad David Arquette impression the whole time. How bout the wonderful Francine McDolmand? Let's put her in a bad blonde hairstyle and make her act the equivalent of a chicken flapping its wings. Oh how bout John Macklovich. Well, you know that part of him that's sort of boring and annoying? Let's amp that way up! Tilly Swindon? Let's have her do her ice queen schtick but make sure to take away the sex appeal that's usually right under the ice. I was staring at this flick and right from the getgo I was like, 'Why does this movie insist on me disliking everyone!?'
As for the plot it was a big mess involving some sort of government disc with information and sex affairs and everyone gets all tangled up blah blah so whatevery to me that I didn't even really care when a main character caught a bullet in the head. The gunshot just triggered what I was thinking all along. I'm bored. This is stupid. This is barely funny. I'm only laughing at the most obscure side remarks only. It's strangely creepy. And why in the fruck did they give Francine McDolmand such awful lines. (grounds for divorce). I couldn't wait for it to end and just waddle out of that place stuffed with a Coen misfire feeling like I just ate a whole big bag of rice cakes. Stuffed and still way hungry.
That being said, I do have to admit I didn't drop out of the movie while watching it. I did have some mild curiosity about how it was going to wrap up. And now and then I'd be reminded that it was a Coen brothers movie. But man, this thing was so offbeat in the oftbad way. Yadda, of course as a huge fan of these guys, I expect them to kind crank out a clunker now and then. Usually because they overtry or go too big or whatever. But this just felt like an big undertry. With all the enthusiasm of a lazy softball pitcher that throws a big blooper that lands right in the dirt without even reaching the plate.
Three Good Things About this Movie
- I thought Clooney's machine was funny.
- JK Simmons is always excellent to watch.
- Now and then a scene would totally work.
Three Bad Things About this Movie
- The music was constantly pretending something was happening.
- Brad Pitts annoyed me from beginning to end.
- It never got going. The car didn't turn over once.
All in all, this is Coen brothers write-off movie. On the shelf next to Ladykillers or whatever. It's watchable and it has some moments. But the concern was how rough it was to watch. Physically it was a combination between squinty eyes, sleepy head on a shoulder, and shaking my head from side to side in incrudulous awe of how it sold everything so super short. Bottom line. Realistically, if you take the Coen's brothers name off of this and take all the stars out-- they should have taken the direction of the title and applied it to their own script.