The Guardian's film reviewer, Peter Bradshaw, today gave Gambit, written by Joel and Ethan Coen, one star. I don't care. I'm going to see it anyway. I love everything the Coens turn out. It's easy to say that Fargo is a great film, or The Big Lebowski, because you'd have to have a heart of stone and a funny-bone bypass to get nothing out of them. But I love the Coen Bros bad films as well. In fact my favourite Coen Bros film is one the press thought was terrible - Intolerable Cruelty.
Opening with a philandering swimming-pool salesman getting shot in the backside, Intolerable Cruelty involves the tribulations of a vacuous much-married socialite (Catherine Zeta Jones) and cynical divorce lawyer (George Clooney). The divorce lawyer, author of a famously impregnable Pre-Nuptial agreement (the "Massey Pre-Nup"), of course falls for the socialite and all manner of capers then ensue as legal convolutions make them rich one minute and a pauper the next, in love one day and estranged the following. Ms Jones is perfectly cast - that she is as wooden as a stake through Stanislavski's heart only makes her more believable - and each time I watch it I have forgotten the plot twists thoroughly enough to enjoy them afresh.
Intolerable Cruelty isn't a great film - the press might be right: it might even be a bad film. I fear Gambit might be a bad film too. But Joel and Ethan are nothing if not intelligent - they know a turkey when they see one - so why do they persist in these modest, popular, unambitious multiplexers when they are also capable of so much more?
It's in the answer that their appeal for me lies. The Coen Brothers just like films - good ones, bad ones, serious ones, funny ones - they don't care. They do it because they can. They are playing. And it is the artlessness of their messing around that I find so appealing.
