O Brother, Where Art Thou? **** (2000, George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Charles Durning) – Classic Movie Review 473

The Coen Brothers Joel and Ethan direct George Clooney in 2000 in a patchy but posh and stylish and often very entertaining comedy drama.

A super Clooney sings, does a Southern accent, plays comedy and looks gorgeous of course as Ulysses Everett McGill, a crook who flees a chain gang and embarks on the adventure of a lifetime. He’s one of three clueless convicts on the run in 30s Mississippi, who strive to get their hands on stashed-away loot before a flood threatens to ruin their spoils.

Gormless Pete Hogwallop (played by John Turturro) and Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) tag along with Clooney, and they end up recording a song as The Soggy Bottom Boys, which soon becomes a hit.

Despite all the really good things on show here, not least Roger Deakins’s gleamingly luminous cinematography and a great soundtrack and score, the Coen Brothers are clearly struggling with the script and the pacing in their direction, neither of which is quite resolved properly.

Turturro and Nelson are assets to the show, while John Goodman and Holly Hunter appear to effect as Big Dan Teague and Penny. In a Clark Gable-style turn, Clooney, though, is on his best ever form, apart from, maybe, in The Three Kings.

Clever, funny and a charmer – you could say that about the film, but that’s just George!

The script is supposedly based on the poem The Odyssey by Homer, and the title comes from a pretend movie on a marquee in Preston Sturges’s 1941 film classic Sullivan’s Travels, with Joel McCrea as a film director. How that must have appealed to Joel Coen! The music is by Chris Thomas King and the score by T-Bone Burnett and Carter Burwell.

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© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 473

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