Intolerable Cruelty is a comedy about marriage, and mostly the bizarre marriage between the dark laughs characteristic of the Coen Brothers and the zany comic fare popular in films about 50 years ago. It's like seeing Judy Holliday in a Bunuel film. Well. It's surreal, anyway. And very funny.

George Clooney stars as a no-holds-barred divorce lawyer and Catherine Zeta-Jones co-stars as the golddigger who becomes the object of his affection. They duke it out in divorce court, when he destroys her pose as a wronged woman and exposes her calculating ways. She is hoping to get a divorce that will leave her rich and independent. Once Clooney is through with her, she's divorced, all right, but penniless.

By now, Clooney is smitten, even though he knows the woman is a barracuda. What follows are the tricks and games -- and weddings and murder attempts -- needed to get these lovebirds together.

Intolerable Cruelty is pretty to look at, really and truly funny, streaked with cynicism and chock full of talent. The cast includes Geoffrey Rush, Billy Bob Thornton, Cedric The Entertainer and Edward Herrmann. The dialogue, at times, seems to involve most of the Marx Brothers.

For this viewer, the weirdest part of Intolerable Cruelty was seeing Clooney and Zeta-Jones cast according to public image -- Clooney as the successful leading man who has never married, Zeta-Jones as the pretty starlet who quickly married into Hollywood royalty. It's clever and it's funny, and it looks good on both of them.

Notions of image and money as they relate specifically to the weirdness of the West Coast are the source of much of the film's humour. Intolerable Cruelty opens with an inspired sequence featuring Geoffrey Rush as an icon of L.A. idiocy: Zipping along in his expensive car with the top down, appalling ponytail flying in the breeze, singing along, badly, to a Simon & Garfunkel tune on his car radio. It's a moment that sets the scene for much of what follows.

On the other hand, Intolerable Cruelty also has room for some bizarre slapstick -- a bit in a lousy diner, a hit man with asthma, kilts in Vegas (you had to be there).

And that works, too, strangely.

Intolerable Cruelty is a lot of fun. Downside? Sure -- sometimes audience laughter obliterates the next line of dialogue.

You can live with that.

(This film is rated PG)

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