Burn After Reading

Those wacky Coen brothers. Everyone is a character in there films. Even their thrillers have a comic book quality to them. And most of the time I find them interesting and engaging but this time not. Occasionally Clooney would look up to goof with the camera, but only Brad Pitt seemed to be having a supremely fun time on this film. He bounced around and smiled and pretend-scowled before smiling again at most every situation. He was sup a goofball energetic personal trainer, you really enjoyed watching him up until his last moment on screen. Everyone else was just annoying. Tilda Swinton is cold and edgy-looking enough; they really didn't need to make her character a heartless bitch, too. Malkovich delivers crazy Malkovich, Clooney delivers Lothario Clooney, McDormand delivers a weirdly nice plastic-surgery-obsessed narcissist, and so on and so forth. None of it adds up as the audience is pulled into the slapstick yet bloody antics of the whole ensemble. And the ending just leaves the men in the lurch and the women getting out from difficult stuff. I've always known the Coens to be misanthropes but at least they were entertaining as their characters wallowed in life's drudgeries. Here I just wanted to smack a few of them around myself before leaving the theater in disappointment. There's more entertainment in a kindergarten class even if the kids can't Burn After Reading.