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Review by Susan Granger
2 stars out of 4
Joel and Ethan Coen have built a reputation on their quirky,
intelligent, unorthodox films ("Fargo," "The Big Lebowski," "Raising
Arizona," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "Blood Simple," "Barton Fink") and
this is no exception. Who else would approach Homer's classic
"Odyssey" with a Preston Sturges touch? Yet there is is, up on the
screen, a road movie beginning with a blind prophet. Set in the 1930s,
the story begins as three shackled convicts escape from a Mississippi
chain gang: charming, articulate Everett Ulysses McGill (George
Clooney), a schemer who's obsessed with his Dapper Dan hair pomade and
getting back to ex-wife Penny (Holly Hunter); dumb Delmar (Tim Blake
Nelson) and moody Pete (John Turturro). Relentlessly pursued by state
troopers on their way to find $1.2 million in buried loot, they
encounter the Cyclops, embodied in a one-eyed Bible-thumper (John
Goodman), and the Sirens, three seductive maidens washing laundry in
the river - along with a notorious bank robber, Babyface Nelson
(Michael Badalucco), a campaigning Governor (Charles Durning) and the
Ku Klux Klan. The title comes from the oft-mentioned film in Preston
Sturges' "Sullivan's Travels." To spice up the episodic structure and
stolid pacing, there's T-Bone Burnett's tuneful bluegrass music, as
the trio joins up with a black guitarist (Chris Thomas King), who sold
his soul to the Devil, to cut a hit record as "The Soggy Bottom Boys."
While Roger Deakins' photography is visually stylish, there's a
fundamental problem: a complete lack of humor. It's a comedy with no
laughs. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "O Brother, Where Art
Thou?" is a goofy, bizarre 5, appealing primarily to devoted Coen fans
who will accept their colorful, absurdist style over substance.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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out of 4
