We can all relate to this
I stole the format for this review from one of my most beloved sites: Something Awful. So without further ado, hope aboard the review express!
Expectations: This being a Coen Bros. film, I expected to find an engaging, progressive, original story that, while very entertaining, would shake me to the core and maybe teach me a life lesson or two. As a by-product, I anticipated being exposed to wonderful dialogues, engrossing characters and wit so hot that would decimate a wax museum in one fell swoop.
The Reality: Christa and I departed the theater an hour into the film because nothing resembling a story, joke, plot, or an interesting character manifested itself onto that silver screen.
It was as though the peon charged with handling the ever precious reels dropped them into a vat of sea animals that only devour things like “fun” and “entertainment.” Not one to upset the cinema king, the peon grabbed whatever garbage the sea animals didn’t eat and stitched them together to create the film they showed me in that theater.
What makes this a very sour experience for me is that critics were raving about this film. Go to its entry on Rotten Tomatoes! I don’t know what these critics saw that I didn’t, but I know that not a single LOL escaped my lips.
In the first hour of the film, we are introduced to a family that is falling apart and at the epicenter of that vicious hurricane is a man, Larry, who doesn’t seem to care. He pathetically plods along life’s chosen path, without the will or ambition to talk to connect with his kids, make good with his wife or confront his neighbor who is building a shed on his yard. Instead, Larry climbs up onto the roof and stares at the women next door who sunbathes in the nude. Hey, dude. Why don’t you quit starring at naked women and try to get your life back on track? Clearly, I didn’t understand the motivation of any of these characters.
Some of scenes in the film that one man in our audience laughed out loud to were the following:
1. Larry’s son smoking pot in the boy’s bathroom at school while repeatedly saying “Fuck.”
2. Larry’s wife’s new boyfriend hugs Larry.
3. Larry looks at a pair of breast.
4. Something extremely Jewish happens.
I’m a patient person, but I didn’t have the will power to sit through the rest of the movie that seemed to be an elaborate cinematic trick. I’m sure at the end the Coens come onto the screen and tell everyone that they’ve been had and then use very advanced 3-D technology to give the theater a repentant hug.
I can’t help but wonder that the Coens are pulling an Andy Kaufman and actively trying to upset their fan base. Unfortunately, this results in people so desperate to understand the meaning of this film that they’ll declare it a masterpiece without knowing why. Of course, I’m probably just a big ol’ dummy who doesn’t understand the beauty of film making and thus, I’ll die alone in a very small apartment that smells of my own urine because my brain isn’t capable of grasping such concepts as “hygiene” and “toasters.”
