Kiss Kiss Bang Bang had a similar funny/tragic tone, but that movie just nailed it for me. I’ve loved the Coen Brothers films that I’ve seen and I love dark, twisted comedies. But this one just didn’t work for me. The friend I saw it with absolutely loved it. I think it’s one of those movies that either hits or misses.

I really liked it. I didn’t see many other Coen movies, because I don’t see that many movies in general, so I wasn’t expecting anything in particular. I laughed a lot at the ridiculousness of the characters and at their idiocy. I wasn’t sure what to think of Clooney at the beginning, but at the end, he was hilarious. I loved Ted, the manager. Pitt was very good. I don’t always like him, but I like him in that kind of roles. The final scene was just perfect.

I would recommend it to friends, but not to all of them. One of the people I went to see it with didn’t like it but she only came to see Brad Pitt because she doesn’t like the Coen brothers.

Anyway, I’m not good with commenting movies so I’ll stop right here. Like you said before, I think the trailer showed just the right amount of the movie to tease, not spoil. I will probably see it again.

I didn’t understand how the memoirs got on a disk of financial statements.

Clooney’s character was so well-acted that it almost made up for the fact that he was playing an amalgam of tics. The comments on the floors, the insistence that he was allergic to food that he then would eat, the sex machine, the paranoia, the serial internet dating…it was like the Coens couldn’t cut one small thing they found hilarious, and it didn’t all come together as a person, but just a bunch of lines that, luckily, Clooney made work.

Same goes for the manager of Hardbodies. He’s in love with Linda. He was a Roman Catholic priest. If he had more screen time, I’m sure we’d see that he owns a litter of poodles that are dyed different colors. It’s just too much zany fit into too small a space.

When it works, though, it works. Pitt’s Chad is just as broadly-drawn as Clooney, but he’s basically a blank slate, which really works (other than his relationship with Linda). He’s a goofball who likes his iPod and exercising. That’s enough to carry him through.

The coincidences didn’t bother me too much (if it weren’t for coincidences, most plots wouldn’t happen), but too many essential plot points were put into motion by people who were barely characters in the movie at all. The divorce lawyer’s secretary is the one who drops the disk. Clooney’s wife’s lawyer is the reason Clooney is being followed. The final scene letting us know what happened to all the characters is between two people who are barely in the film at all.

I think this was a really fun romp, but it could have been a classic if the Coens had taken a few more passes at the script.

I like the Coen brothers’ movies because they don’t make movies starring Tom Cruise that are all nicely gift-wrapped and predictable. When Brad Pitt is shot in the head, I smirked because I was at first shocked and then I said “yep, that’s right, that’s exactly the way it should be”. Although there were many things that made me chuckle (this wasn’t meant to be a LOL movie), I must say that when we discover that Katie Cox is a pediatrician, I embarrassed myself in the theater with laughter. Well done, boys, well done.

I’m so glad I didn’t give in to see “The Women” in the next theater.

It struck me as pure farce and as farce I think they missed the boat on it. I agree that parts of it are hilarious (he and I laughed often) but I found a lot of it really … distasteful and even confusing. The far too casual sex by people old enough to know better (my age), the deaths of the only two characters with any redeeming value, and the lack of any reason for folks doing things — most of all, why in the world would a successful DC pediatrician be worried about her husband’s finances when they were probably at least on a par? I didn’t get it. That kind of stuff is hard for me when the details don’t make sense.

I wouldn’t recommend it. As we left, I felt a little like Sandy and Harry leaving the party and saying, “Those guys are jerks. Why do we hang with those people?”

(The chair, thing, I have to say, was very funny. I giggled over it for hours.)

In NCfOM, I found this “breaking of the deal with the audience” especially resonant and affecting, because it tied right in with one of the main themes, as articulated by the Tommy Lee Jones character: that the old certainties are gone, we don’t know what to expect any more, and it’s unsettling. Even if we didn’t consciously tie his words together with the rule-breaking we experienced (we never see the plot resolution that the entire history of movies has taught us will certainly be shown), it helps us to experience what he’s experiencing.

A day later, though I’ll stand by my (regretful) opinion of McDormand’s performance, I will concede that it must have been a tough role to cast, if one is restricted to Hollywood big-name actresses of a certain age: how many of them have clearly and visibly never had work done?

I loved the movie, cheered your comments, and have already recommended the film to someone. The one aspect that keeps taking me aback are references to it in reviews as “a spy film.” Wow, talk about trying to hammer this square peg into some sort of round hole! Which pulls me back to thinking about that gift Clooney made for his wife …

On the whole I thoroughly agree with you (with one exception I’ll get to in a minute). It not only mixes genres, it does so in a somewhat unusually structured way that I don’t think I’ve seen before (granted, I don’t see every movie). For the first 20 minutes or so it’s a drama, with its smiles certainly, but it could be the beginning of a straight-ahead dramatic movie about life in the upper echelons of DC politics/espionage. And then we jump to Hardbodies and all that. And it just builds from there. And then the shock of losing Brad Pitt from the story, bang just like that. I think the Coens knew just what they wanted to do, and pretty much brought it off.

But I don’t find Frances McDormand convincing, I’m afraid. I know she’s written as someone who deliberately puts out a chipper I’m-OK facade to the world, one that’s not quite holding together. But to me it was pretty close to amateur play-acting. Which surprises me, because I have no problem calling her a great actress in general. But her share of the “mugging” didn’t work for me. Meanwhile, Brad Pitt had a more broadly written role and played it even broader, but I bought it as the believable behavior of That Guy.

Otherwise, loved it. I wish we could freeze-dry Clooney at this point in his life, so he could play these sorts of roles forever, he’s just so damn wonderful and so much fun to watch. (Like an adorable one-year-old, in the nature of things he has to outgrow them.) And it was teased in passing early on, but to be faced late in the movie with the notion that Tilda Swinton is, of all things in the world, a children’s doctor… that’s maybe the biggest laugh in the whole movie, and I was one of the loudest laughers.

And as if to demonstrate the value of non-mugging: the other place that got the biggest laughs, and earned them, was that final scene already mentioned. David Rasche and J.K. Simmons are just the demigods of deadpan delivery and almost imperceptibly subtle grimaces and inflections. Beautifully done, gentlemen. Star performances both.