Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading was a film I'd been waiting to see since I heard about the project simply because, well its a Coen Bros. film and I'm always one of the first to line up for their work. I thought No Country for Old Men was a pretty brilliant film but at the same I was very pleased to hear that Burn After Reading would be a return to the cat and mouse, dark-screwball farce infused with the token Coen quirk that just emanates throughout all their films. The film has quite the ensemble cast, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, the always genius J.K. Simmons and my personal favorite, multiple Coen collaborator and wife of Joel Coen, Frances McDormand.
The film begins following Osborne Cox (Malkovich) who in the opening scene is demoted from his job at the CIA due to his excessive drinking and subsequently quits. From there the film follows 4 different groups through a maze that half of them don't even know there in and the other half have no idea how to get to the end or if there is anything at the end. Pitt is completely hilarious as the bumbling personal trainer Chad. He's dialed up to 10 and miles over the top the entire time but it works and succeeds to make for most of the funnier scenes in the film. J.K. Simmons and David Rasch are the highlight of the film as the CIA officers following everything thats going on with complete head scratching confusion at the lunacy of the whole situation. Clooney is good, Malkovich is good but the film as a whole slightly misses the mark. It was very good at times but at the end I just had the feeling that it would've worked much better as a short film. Cut the story down to bare bones, 35-40 minutes and incinerate the excess fat. The people in which you're following throughout the brief but not brief enough 97 mins are such complete dolts that when everything crashes and burns its just the conclusion you figured, and maybe hoped, would happen. The film has some good moments but it just wasn't up to par with most of their previous work.
Bottom Line: On the Coen comedy spectrum, more on par with The Ladykillers than Fargo, Big Lebowski or O Brother Where Art Thou?