The Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading

And I don’t get the praise for Pitt’s comedy chops in this, he’s awful. Someone like Channing Tatum could’ve done this twice as well without being so distractingly try-hard.

― circa1916,

I look at his performance here as a trial run for better, looser, more relaxed ones in the next few years.

I had totally forgotten that in the Coens filmography No Country for Old Men is sandwiched between this and The Ladykillers, which kind of blows my mind.

I think the reason this never worked for me is that it seemed like a case of the Coens self-consciously trying to make a Coen Brothers Type Movie

Pitt's performance isn't about having multilayered comedy chops, it's glorious clowning.

Agreed

Also no country is just lifted straight from the novel, so maybe they didnt have to work themselves into the mood as much

Not that they finish editing a serious drama and then get the bends sitting down to write a goofy comedy - they're usually struggling to get a screenplay financed from the slush pile - but it's more the pattern than not to go from srs bsns -> goofball shit.

Blood Simple -> Raising Arizona
Crossing & Fink b2b -> Hudsucker
Fargo -> Lebowski
Man Who Wasn't -> Intolerable
No Country -> Burn After
Llewyn Davis -> Hail Caesar

i was surprised not so much by the shift in mood but in quality. all this time i'd been thinking of cruelty, ladykiller & burn as one continuous string of misfires (the first two so misconceived & badly executed that i'd wondered if the coens had completely lost it, the third better but just sort of an ungainly clunker), with no country being their reinvigorated return from the wilderness. its wild to realize that it comes square in the middle of that otherwise very awkward string of films. good point darraghmac, maybe the relatively straight adaptation took some of the pressure off

Yes but *also* intolerable cruelty and burn after reading are good tho

It's also harder to be funny than to be serious, imo. One reason I suggested "Burn..." to my wife is that there are far too few contemporary funny movies to watch.

For me the problem with Intolerable Cruelty is that the film never achieved the sense of play it hoped to deliver. It was generally amusing in concept and execution, but it desperately wanted to be delightful and it failed.

josh otm re comedy, everyone has their favs and least favs with the coens but for me all the ones that i think dont work are comedies. its a much, much smaller target to hit.