Intolerable Cruelty

The camera just stands there and gawks at Catherine Zeta-Jones, and so does George Clooney, and so do we. She goes on the list with Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr. It's not a long list. She has the kind of beauty that could melt a divorce lawyer's heart and soften his brain, which is what happens in "Intolerable Cruelty," the new comedy by the Coen Brothers.

Clooney plays Miles Massey, the millionaire author of the Massey Pre-Nup, a prenuptial agreement so tightly written that it has, we learn, never been cracked. "They spend an entire semester on it at Harvard Law." We meet him in divorce court, representing an outraged husband (Geoffrey Rush) who surprised his wife with the pool man and found that odd, since they didn't have a pool.

Massey is hired by Rex Rexroth (Edward Herrmann), who has been briefly married to Marylin (Zeta-Jones). She has a video, taken by her detective Gus (Cedric the Entertainer) exposing Rex as a cheater, and wants to win his millions in the settlement. Miles wins the case, so it's curious that Marylin wants to hire him to draft a Massey Pre-Nup for her next marriage, which will be to a gulping, blushing Texas oil billionaire named Howard (Billy Bob Thornton in full display).

Miles, who is already gob-smacked with Marylin's bewitching sex appeal, can't understand why she wants to marry a yahoo like Howard. Or, actually, he can: She wants Howard's money. In that case, why does she want the Massey Pre-Nup? To prove she really loves him, she says. Since she really doesn't, Miles can only look on in wonderment and admiration. He's fascinated by the brilliance with which she violates conventional morality.

The Coens start with nothing but ducks in this movie, and for a long time it looks like they're all in a row. Clooney and Zeta-Jones are both great-looking people, both smart, both able to play comedy, both able to handle the kind of dialogue fondly described in our nation's literate past as witty repartee. Both characters are sharks, but both are human, too, and their mutual sexual attraction is so palpable you could cook with it. Miles is moved with the profound admiration only one slickster can have for another; when Marylin actually inspires Howard to eat the uncrackable Massey Pre-Nup (with barbecue sauce), Miles realizes he is witnessing not just beauty and genius, but a will to challenge his own.

Plots like this have fueled lovely screwball comedies, and "Intolerable Cruelty" is in the genre, but somehow not of it. The Coens sometimes have a way of standing to one side of their work: It's the puppet and they're the ventriloquists. The puppet is sincere, but the puppetmaster is wagging his eyebrows at the audience and asking, can you believe this stuff? Joel and Ethan are bounteously gifted filmmakers, but sometimes you just want them to lay off the irony and climb down here with the groundlings. Their "Fargo" was a movie that loved its characters, and it's one of the best movies I've ever seen.