Coens Burn, But Not Brightly

Burn After Reading is your standard Coen Brothers comedy: It’s black, clever, and zany, and David Ansen writes in Newsweek that he “enjoyed just about every heartlessly jolly minute of it.” The film is nominally a spy/thriller spoof, its sidewinder plot involving airhead gym employees trying to sell supposed secrets to the Russians. But really, it’s less a spoof than an “escalating farce of idiotic behavior” from a “cast of delusional dunces who are a wonder to behold.”

The main characters are all “broadly played, dim-witted grotesque wearing his or her own distinctively stricken kabuki mask,” writes J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. But though all are well played, none emerges as a sympathetic character, making it a “comedy without consequences.” Richard Corliss in Time couldn’t figure out what the brothers were trying to do, making Burn “a movie about stupidity that left me feeling stupid.” (More Coen brothers stories.)