http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20224739,00.html
"Anyone who has seen the trailer for Burn After Reading on TV — and given the aggressiveness of the promotional campaign for this lazy new frolic, I assume most everyone has —.."
Let me just say that I love the idea of a "lazy frolic". What exactly would that be? Was Schwarzbaum deliberately trying to create an oxymoron here? I think the more likely answer is that she just writes her reviews MAD LIBS-style and her alternate creations of "sleepy new claptrap" and "bashful new pennyfarthing" weren't up to par.
I do have to hand it to her though, Schwarzbaum is absolutely dead on about the adverstising for this movie. I'm glad I'm not the only one who got fed up with hearing the constant radio and television ads, the huge, skyscraper-spanning billboards, the aisles of talking John Malkovich dolls, the seemingly neverending news coverage of the die hard Burn After Reading fans dressed up in homemade outfits camping out for the midnight release of the film, the pre-film speculation as to the fates of the film's beloved characters, and, of course, the fruit snacks.
"The dour terrain of novelist Cormac McCarthy sharpened the best of the brothers' instincts for tracking the path of human anarchy, and the reward from their public and peers was a bookcase of awards, Oscars included."
I think we can assume the Oscars were included, Lisa. No one talked about how No Country For Old Men swept the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards.
"But the reward to themselves turns out to be a retreat to the familiar funny farm."
...Alliteration!
"Once more in Burn After Reading they goof around, in their arch, bemused way, with conventions of genre— a little screwball here, some spy spoof there. Once more they work from an original Coen story in which needy people are rewarded with chuckles for their neediness."
Way to pick on needy people, Coen brothers. >:(
"But as a result of all that tilling, the movie is overplowed"
Ahahahahaha. A FARMING metaphor. A completely random, unnecessary FARMING metaphor. Welcome to flavor country, people.
"Pitt plays Chad Feldheimer (the characters wear funny-sounding names as they might fake mustaches)"
This just in: Characters in fiction often have unusual, preposterous names. More at 11.
"Good news: Clooney plays the third in what he has called his Coen-created ''trilogy of idiots'' with less of a capital I than he did in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty."
...What?
"For idle amusement, Osborne Cox sports a bow tie and a loyalty to his fellow Princeton alumni, signifying a brand of outmoded, old-boy values I guess the filmmakers are laughing at just because such things are outmoded. Even so, the ever more rococo performance artiste Malkovich manages to bust looser and goosier than even the Coens know what to do with, and his virtuoso thespian arias of alcohol- enhanced nuttiness (precisely tailored to fit an aging ex–CIA man's lifestyle) are the movie's one honestly fresh turn of the screwy."
This is a pretty characteristic Schwarzbaum sentence: a very simple observation ("John Malkovich plays a drunk ex-CIA agent really well!") that has been made almost completely indecipherable by throwing out of place nonsense words at it ("Rococo"? seriously, Lisa? Are you just flipping the pages of a thesaurus and pointing at words randomly?)
"...McDormand portrays fellow gym employee Linda Litzke, a sad, single lady who treats her femininity as something akin to an embarrassing, itchy rash. (She's got some of the choppy, desexualized speech patterns of Fargo's Marge Gunderson, and a whole lot more self-loathing.)"
Oh, here we go.
"Linda hates everything about her face and body — her goal is to finance a head-to-toe surgical overhaul, possibly with extortion money wrung from Chad for his computer disc, if that's what it takes. Still, she's also brave enough to look for love online; she dares to have real feelings. And while she hurts, we're invited to laugh. Linda is Burn After Reading's most troublesome character — she's a serious woman disguised as a joke, thrown into a story that has no use for seriousness (or, jeez, for women). Here's something to consider after watching Pitt revel in the role of a dim bulb perfectly contented with his life while McDormand is stuck once again playing a bright-enough woman discontented with the universe:.."
This is the part where Lisa projects her own neuroses on to the film and misses the point. For some reason, she decides that this movie is misogynist or something, based solely on the fact that there is a female character and she is unhappy. Nevermind that pretty much no one in the film was depicted with a shred of dignity besides Tilda Swinton's character. Schwarzbaum also apparently missed the part of the movie where the "dim bulb perfectly contented with his life" was (SPOILERS!) shot in the fucking head. I don't get where she's coming from here, did she think people were meant to sit in theatres, cheeks filled with popcorn, guffawing loudly at how Frances McDormand's character wanted liposuction? That poor, fictional woman.
You may have noticed I cut off right before the end of the review. I did this to highlight the Crowning Moment of self -indulgent insanity that is Lisa Schwarzbaum's review of Burn After Reading.
"...Is this not very old country for Coen men?"
...
...
...
..It's like she just decided "eh, I could make a point here I guess, but that'd interfere with my half assed word play. Fuck it, '...IS THIS NOT VERY OLD COUNTRY FOR COEN MEN?'? Oh Lisa, you've done it again. Ka-ching!"
In conclusion, is this review not the BAUM? ;) ;) ;) ;)
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