A Serious Man? More Like a Serious Letdown

I'm seriously confused.

You see, I thought this was supposed to be a narrative film. You know, the kind with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Like the Coen Brothers always make.  Really really well.

Now, there are some auteurs who get tired in their old age ... Oliver Stone is the first one that comes to mind. My favorite quote surrounding W was a Facebook status that said, "Colin can't wait to see 'W' because he's a big fan of instant nostalgia." The guy needed to stop making propaganda about 10 or 15 years ago. What's next, Obama? A retrospective of the election? I can't wait.

But the Coen Brothers have been pretty consistently excellent. Though their movies sometimes wander existentially, leaving you with kind of an empty void at the end ... they at least have an ending and you always get the point.

A Serious Man has a beginning. And a really good one, at that, that would've been supremely awesme if it had had anything to do with the rest of the movie.

It's got a really good middle, too. Though the characters are caricatures, they're lovable caricatures like only the Coen Brothers know how to make. I was really interested, and was awaiting the climax, which was minutes - maybe seconds - away, before the finishing credits rolled.

And that was the problem ... the finishing credits rolled about fifteen minutes too early.

As an "artistic film" maybe I can "get it" and "appreciate the message." Variety's Todd McCarthy supposedly called A Serious Man "the kind of picture you get to make after you've won an Oscar." If you were watching it at a film festival, you might call it "a brilliant film" - meaning that it's highly artistic, beautifully shot, and incredibly introspective.

But as a narrative film - which, let's face it, is what you, the viewer at home, wants to watch - I'm left completely dissatisfied, like I got cheated out of the lump of chocolate at the bottom of my ice cream cone.

It's a shame, too. It could've been seriously good. Instead it was seriously disappointing.