There are those who have never quite been on Joel and Ethan
Coen’s wavelength in terms of comedy, but I’m not in that group.
In fact, I’m as big a Coen Brothers fan as anybody; I even dug
their critically-lambasted Intolerable Cruelty and The
Ladykillers. But I flat-out didn’t get why 95 percent of the
material in their latest effort, Burn After Reading, was
supposed to be funny as I suffered through it. As the typical
old, progressive Los Angeles elitists in attendance at the
advanced screening of the film I patronized hooted and hollered,
I sat in a state of disbelief. “This piece of you know what
was written and directed by the same brothers who brought us
No Country for Old Men and Fargo?” I thought to
myself. "How could that be?" Minor as the Coens intended for
Burn After Reading to seem, the movie is inexcusably unfunny.
What else is there for me to say about the
film? Its plot
about a group of fitness-trainers who find what they assume is a
disc full of covert CIA files on their gym’s floor—it’s really a
neurotic ex-agent’s (John Malkovich) confusingly-written
memoirs—isn’t worth dissecting. The narrative succeeds neither
as a comedy nor as a thriller. Only one member of the movie’s
cast (Brad Pitt, playing the doofus of all doofuses) can be
credited with the two chuckles the film provoked in me. The rest
of the seasoned actors—Malkovich, George Clooney, Frances
McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Peter Jenkins, among others—only
seem to be present in the picture either because A) they’re a
usual Coen-collaborator or B) they sought an easy-paycheck. (In
other words, not much creativity is on-display in the
acting-department.) Without much to discuss, I’ll merely end on
a necessary note of caution: no matter how big a Coen fan you
think you are, Burn After Reading isn’t worth your time
or money. Vicky Christina Barcelona, Tropic Thunder,
and The House Bunny, while all imperfect in their own
rights, collectively represent a variety of comedies in release
that you’ll be able to laugh at (and enjoy yourself) a lot more
while watching.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 9.12.2008
Screened on: 9.10.2008 at the Aero Theatre in Santa
Monica, CA.