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Intolerable Cruelty
Universal Pictures


4.6

based on 40 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 61 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: Rated PG-13 for sexual content, language and brief violence

Starring George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Geoffrey Rush, Cedric the Entertainer, Edward Herrmann, Paul Adelstein, Richard Jenkins, and Billy Bob Thornton

A romantic comedy about a man who wins in court and a woman who courts to win. (Universal Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Ethan and Joel Cohen Robert Ramsey (also story) Matthew Stone (also story) John Romano (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Joel Coen Ethan Coen
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 10, 2004 Video: February 10, 2004 Theatrical: October 10, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	100 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Empire Damon Wise

Tight as a drum, glamorous and exquisitely funny, this one should earn them (Coens) enough cash to make five more offbeat minor masterpieces like "The Man Who Wasn't There" -- and the Coens deserve that as much as we do.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie is a delicious, consistently hilarious screwball farce that gives Clooney his best comedy role to date and should finally, forever, lift the Coens into the wide-release movie mainstream.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Something not seen in movie theaters for a long time: an intelligent, modern screwball comedy, a minor classic on the order of competent, fast-talking curve balls about deception and greed like Mitchell Leisen's "Easy Living" and Billy Wilder's "Major and the Minor."

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

It is wonderful for what it is: a delightful, thoroughly satisfying comedy of modern manners.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Hilariously overblown, "Cruelty" fairly pops at the seams with the beloved eccentricity of Joel and Ethan Coen, from the fiendishly ludicrous scenarios and casually tossed off visual gags to the razor-sharp repartee.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Elegant, cheerfully cynical fun of the kind we used to get regularly from Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks and other masters of the classic Hollywood screwball comedy -- all those '30s-'40s movies about rich people sloshed, or acting crazy and running romantically amok.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Takes the traditional romantic comedy and tweaks it by way of "The War of the Roses." Rarely has strife between the sexes been so ruthless, so civilized, and so funny.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A work of gentle, continual hilarity that feels far more ordinary than other Coen works and yet has every bit of the originality and exactness that makes the brothers' best films so wonderful.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

None of this would work, of course, without stylish performances in the leads and Mr. Clooney and Ms. Zeta-Jones do themselves and their dubious characters proud.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

It's over-the-top. It's wild. It's filled with outrageous behavior all around.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Zeta-Jones is merely ravishing, but Clooney owns the film. Ordinarily best at sardonic, man's-man confidence, he strides through Intolerable Cruelty with fantastic screwball zest. To see Clooney tenderize, season, grill, and serve this ham hock of a role is to see an old-fashioned virtuoso in perpetual motion.

Film Threat Chris Barsanti

Probably the Coen’s funniest movie since “Raising Arizona.”

Time Richard Corliss

Even when the movie sags and strains a bit in Act III, Clooney keeps it flying with old-fashioned movie-star allure. He's got it all: Cary Grant's looks and, inside, Bob Hope's snake-oil-salesman soul.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Smart, silly, splenetic and a bit smug, it's a movie that might put a viewer's teeth on edge were it not for its winning lead performances.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The film is often at odds with itself as a sincere work of romantic comedy, as Wilder's sometimes were, too. Nonetheless, it's determined to keep Clooney's considerable comedic skills front and center. He's never been looser, sexier, or more antic.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

There are laughs here aplenty, and sexy, goofy, off-the-cuff charm.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Intolerable Cruelty is a romantic comedy, but it has enough dark, strange, and cynical moments to qualify as a full-fledged part of the Coen canon.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Near the end of this smart, speedy romantic farce, the comic engine hits a wall and sputters. Until then, this Coen brothers film -- easily their silliest -- is fueled by a screwball fizz that keeps the laughs popping.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The results have the Coens' usual tartness most of the way, before turning soft and gooey at the center.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Not brilliantly funny nor incisively clever, Intolerable Cruelty is still moderately satirical and laugh-out-loud enjoyable.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If Intolerable Cruelty isn't a convincing love story, it's a hugely entertaining one, with comic relief -- in the form of Cedric the Entertainer as a voyeuristic private eye and Tom Aldredge as a decaying law-firm boss issuing directives while hooked up to life-support -- piled on top of the comedy.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthie Stein

Too slick but amusing marital farce.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Mostly, it's a Coen brothers movie so slick, so careful in rationing its darkly perverse and personal elements, that it seems suspiciously sweet. Intolerable Cruelty feels like the Coens' peculiar new way of being cynical, by pretending they're not.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

While it's not nearly as beguiling as the Coen's last pic, the uncanny "The Man Who Wasn't There," Cruelty is still a brisk hoot.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

A collaboration between the notoriously offbeat Coen brothers and thoroughly mainstream screenwriters Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, this piquant romantic comedy is both resolutely generic and bristling with barbs that go down with a delicious fizz and leave behind a refreshing blast of tartness.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Has a solid farce structure, a bunch of ripe second bananas, and two sinfully attractive stars ready to raise comic hell. So why is a movie with so many genuine laughs and so many good bits only fitfully amusing? The short answer is that the Coen brothers seem to be incapable of trusting their material.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The first half of Intolerable Cruelty is more than tolerable; it's a dopey kick full of goofy jokes tossed off so quickly you're reminded less of bickering-bantering Grant and Rosalind Russell than Groucho and Chico Marx.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

So clever, so funny, so suavely entertaining that it comes as a shock to realize that it's not nearly as satisfying as all those qualities would lead you to believe.

Variety David Rooney

A thoroughly entertaining comedy about love, lawyers and fat divorce settlements. While a slight imbalance in the romantic formula stops it just short of truly soaring, the crackling dialogue and buoyant wordplay make this a delightful throwback to classic screwball comedies.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

The Coens engineer a funny, entertaining battle of the sexes here, but the preponderance of indelible male characters and less memorable female roles render it something of a mismatch.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

If it's not quite as funny as you want it to be, it's still more than enough to keep you entertained.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie has many scenes of delicious comedy, Clooney and Zeta-Jones play their characters perfectly in an imperfect screenplay.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The fault isn't Clooney's alone. The Coen brothers contrive a few spectacularly funny bits and pieces but rarely get into a flow. Too often they mistake facetiousness for slapstick invention or wit, and they don't follow through on their best ideas.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The Coens do an efficient job of stamping their signature grotesquerie on sumptuous Beverly Hills and Las Vegas settings and ladling on gallows humor and malice, sometimes with the verve of early Robert Zemeckis.

Slate David Edelstein

The glibness exhausts you, and the Coens are emotionally so far outside their subject that Intolerable Cruelty is finally no different from most of the other dumb slapstick spoofs that pass for screwball comedy these days.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Intolerable Cruelty, while tolerable, isn't very radical--or very good, either. The Coens wrote the script eight years ago on assignment, not intending to direct it, and that may explain why the result often lacks their customary bizarro facetiousness.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

This is a decidedly hit or miss deal which, despite the current outpouring of critical praise, is destined to rank among the Coen's least memorable achievements.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

With Intolerable Cruelty, though, something scares me: I cannot detect a heartbeat of feeling, no matter how close I press a stethoscope against the star machinery of George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Intolerable Cruelty seems the kind of movie that results from two essentially erudite, anarchic talents playing down to the masses.

The Hollywood Reporter Jean Oppenheimer

The Coen brothers had a golden opportunity to make a darkly humorous, deliciously clever battle of the sexes, and they let it slip through their fingers. Instead, the duo... settled for a broad farce that is long on manic, cartoonish behavior and short on intelligence and wit.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.6 (out of 10) based on 61 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jared B. gave it a10:
A laugh riot. Also, a great looking film, resembling the romantic comedies of the 50's. George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones make a wonderful pair. Cedric the Entertainer was hysterical. Good job, Coen brothers

Dan B. gave it an8:
Plot was a little hackneyed and smooth but Clooney gives such a great performance... and anyway, come on: everybody likes berries!

Michael M. gave it an 8:
A fun, inventive and hip romantic comedy that never sags or never falls apart. With a brilliant performance by Clooney, this film is definitely one of the funniest films of 2003. Zeta Jones and him have perfect chemistry. The film is definitely a gem and ranks as one of the top films of 2003.

Only Sullivan gave it a 0:
Simply intolerably boring.

Pat C. gave it a 3:
Another Coen project that turns brillance into ineptitude. Spectacular start and presentation of characters in the zany Coen fashion. Proceeds to go over the top, asking us to cheer on the conversion of a lawyer into a human when his elevated testosterone turns on him. While the practice of law attempts to bring about justice and fairness, it is primarily the enforcement of sociopolitical assumptions. If this reality had been followed to the end, the Coens would not have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. In the end, like the law firm's senior partner, this film has no guts. The only insight the Coens had was refraining to turn this project into a holocaust by involving the children of divorce.

Allan T. gave it a 6:
I got the feeling that the Coen Brothers were trying to do something out of the the ordinary.When the Coen Brothers try to do something out of the ordinary, it comes across as extremely ordinary.

Dennis P. gave it a 3:
I still cannot believe that the normally reliable Coen Bothers had anything to do with this unfunny mess. Clooney and Zeta-Jones are fine, as is the rest of the talented cast, but nobody could have saved this bland, humorless script. Some scenes, like Clooney's speech at the divorce lawyer convention, are simply painful. When I see the Coen's names in the credits of a film, I expect much, much more than "Intolerable Cruelty" delivered.

Intolerable Cruelty Universal Pictures

Intolerable Cruelty
Universal Pictures