O Brother, Where Art Thou?

It’s amusing. It’s got a quirky cast of characters, and the three leads are a ton of fun (when isn’t George Clooney?). The music, the cinematography, the humor, it’s all got that trademark Coen Brothers quirk and charm, and it’s fun and breezy. Its also a bit overlong and has no narrative cohesion. This isn’t the first Coen movie to lack those elements, but here, it runs its course because the movie is modeled after a story with actual structure: The Odyssey. That should be a slam dunk for a framework, but the movie just doesn’t want to use the tools at its disposal to be anything but a Coen Brothers movie. I do want to stress this isn’t a bad movie. It’s fun and the charisma of the actors does a lot of heavy lifting. I just couldn’t help but feel it could’ve been more, and it just didn’t want to.