he latest entry from the Coen Brothers is a smart comedy about stupid people and one that will sadly be getting the shaft from critics despite its considerable qualities. You see, this movie has the dubious honor of following the filmmaking siblings’ late career masterpiece No Country For Old Men. Just as that movie left the 2007 Toronto film festival riding a sea of over-praise, this one is leaving the 2008 fest being over-bashed. Is it the best movie they’ve ever made? No, but it’s still much more challenging and interesting than 90% of the comedies shat out of the Hollywood machine each year.

Burn After Reading opens with John Malkovich’s CIA agent Osbourne Cox being fired for negligence and alcoholism. It’s certainly reasonable cause for dismissal, but Cox immediately overreacts, assumes that there he is the victim of some vast conspiracy, and storms out of the office. This scene sets the tone for the entire film. Each of the characters is convinced that they are part of an espionage thriller, but the truth is that they are actually in broad comedy. Ever the pranksters, Joel and Ethan Coen extend this confusion to the filmmaking itself. The movie is shot and scored like a spy thriller and only the confused actions of the characters make it a comedy. Lazy viewers will get confused, but then Joel and Ethan have never been ones to play to the rafters, now have they?

The rest of the plot revolves around Francis McDormand’s chatter box personal trainer Linda, who is desperate for plastic surgery she can’t afford. When Malkovich’s wife accidentally leaves a CD of his financial data in McDormand’s gym, she naturally assumes that it contains valuable CIA documents. Along with her idiot trainer friend Chad (played by a surprisingly hilarious Brad Pitt), Linda attempts to blackmail Malkovich. He’s gone on a bender since being fired and suspects foul play, leading to a series of confusions involving car crashes, Russians, hatchet murders, and an incurable sex addict played by George Clooney. You know, all the standard Coen brothers stuff.

This is a big candy-colored entertainment factory with gloriously manic performances

The movie is definitely hysterical. There are a handful of sequences (especially those involving Clooney’s secret invention and J.K. Simmons’ perplexed head of the CIA) that are as funny as anything the Coen Brothers have ever done. However, the movie ultimately doesn’t rank amongst their best work. It’s simply too chaotic, silly, and frivolous. The brothers joke about the meaninglessness of the movie themselves in the screenplay and they have no aspirations for this film beyond silly entertainment. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but as a fan of their work you can’t help but leave the theater wanting more.

This movie may lack the subtle human observations and tragedy of Fargo or the lunatic sense of comic hysteria found in Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, but it is hardly a failure. It says a lot about their reputation that they can make a good movie and be attacked by critics for not making a masterpiece.

As long as you head into this film with curbed expectations, it’s hard to imagine that you won’t enjoy it. It might be a big budget project, but at least the film manages to be a more pure representation of the Coen Brothers style than their disappointing studio projects Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. The Coens are simply two of the most creative filmmakers working today and even when they are making frivolous projects like this they still pack more creativity and ingenuity on screen than most directors manage in their entire careers.