the coen brothers have ventured back into the comedy genre with Burn After Reading, a genre that has given them the most critical problems, although personally i have been a fan of their least well received ones (i didn't hate Ladykillers and i liked Intolerable Cruelty).  this one however, not so much.  actually let me rephrase that...  i liked all the elements of Burn After Reading, but unfortunately the film is not the sum of it's parts.

i liked the quirky and somewhat over the top characters.  i was interested in the story on a basic level and i did laugh out loud at parts.  the problem is that it just doesn't come together very well.  it is all over the place and nothing really holds together.  maybe that was the absurdest point of it all, but for me i was sitting there thinking to myself, "i like many of the parts, but why am i not really caring or enjoying the film as a whole more?"

it all came together in the character of the top guy at the cia that we meet played by j.k. simmons.  he is being kept up to date with all the goings on and the people and relations and deaths and craziness and at the end he basically looks at the guy filling him in on everything and says, and i am paraphrasing here, 'huh?  what the hell happened.  it makes no sense.'

for me, he was like the audience who had just seen the film, and reflected really how i felt.