An average movie

Even though this movie had been a big critical and commercial flop, I was still eager to check it out. Well, you have to admit that it did sound great on paper. I mean, it was directed by George Clooney, it was written by the Coen brothers and it was starring Matt Damon and Julianne Moore, so, it should have been a sure winner, right? I'm afraid not. Basically, they tried to deliver some kind of mix of a vintage suburban satire with a really half-baked Hitchcockian plot but the end-result was just seriously tedious. To make things worse, there was another completely unnecessary and poorly developed sub-plot about some racial tension against a black family, apparently just to make sure that the viewers really understood that the US suburbs in the 50's were a really evil place to live. To be honest, nothing really worked in this movie. Sure, there was sometimes the usual quirkiness that you find in your typical Coen feature but it was never funny. Furthermore, the thriller part was just completely transparent and therefore really boring and, finally, none of the characters was remotely interesting or entertaining. For Clooney, a once really promising director, it was another failure and easily his weakest directing effort so far so you might wonder if the guy shouldn't think about going back to being a full-time actor again. Anyway, to conclude, even though I have seen worse, the damned thing was pretty weak and I don't think it is really worth a look.

5/10