Intolerable Cruelty

The Coen brothers have pulled off their most disconcerting U-turn yet with this cheery tale of poodle eat poodle, which has Made In Hollywood scrawled so thickly across it that there's barely a joke or a camera angle sporting the hitherto wacky duo's signature.

Miles Massey (George Clooney) is the world's hottest divorce lawyer, with the clientele, the bank balance and the ennui to match; Marylin (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is the kind of woman who keeps him in Veuve Clicquot: a beautiful gold digger set on high-maintenance marriages (without prenup, naturally) followed by payola divorce.

Why Miles should fall for her - given that he must see her ilk every day of the week - is a mystery the Coens make a half-hearted stab at solving by having the two quote poetry incongruously at each other.

Why Marylin should find herself smitten with Miles is even stranger, given that he turns out to be the biggest patsy ever to get his name on a law firm's letterhead.

They dutifully bat double-crosses from divorce court to altar and back again. It's a reasonably entertaining 100 minutes, but there are no surprises and only one good joke, which has to be an all-time low for a Coen brothers film.