Intolerable Cruelty

The Coen brothers, who began as maverick filmmakers, have never been associated with glossy, big-budget star vehicles, so it's not surprising to hear one of them admit that they had reservations about directing Intolerable Cruelty because it seemed "a little too commercial for us." Originally, the project was just a writing assignment for them, and they had to be convinced to direct it. Viewers learn this in a straight-forward 12-minute featurette (promoted as "a detailed, in-depth look at the creation of the movie") that includes interview footage of all the principal players but is neither detailed nor in-depth. It's typical fluff, with the actors complimenting each other and very little behind-the-scenes footage in evidence; you'd see very nearly as much in the average Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood report. We learn that the Coens tried to make the film reminiscent of old-fashioned screwball comedies. They specifically refer to the casting of Billy Bob Thornton in a role that in the '30s would have gone to perennial odd-man-out Ralph Bellamy. The screwball-comedy theme carries over to a 5-minute wardrobe featurette, in which the costume designer admits to modeling George Clooney's suits after one worn by Cary Grant in a '40s movie. As usual, there's no Coen brothers commentary, and the brothers seem to deliberately thumb their noses at consumers with a very brief blooper segment (titled "Filmmaker Approved and Assembled Outtakes") that augments a few nice Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones outtakes with two minutes of silent, black-and-white stock shots of trains (used in the background of one brief scene in the movie). Not funny, guys. Produced by the film's associate producer David Diliberto, the supplements in toto run less than a half-hour, which seems pretty spare for a major-studio film with A-list star power. --Ed Hulse