New year, new movies. I managed a (to me) respectable 107 movies in 2006, in other words a little more than my goal of 104.

So, this year was opened with an adaption of Homer’s “The Odyssey”, namely the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?“.

This lends both strengths and weaknesses to the movie. One of the former is that for one who has some kind of knowledge of “The Odyssey”, an extra dimension is added to the film: Trying to figure out what represents what. In my case, this passed over into the absurd, as what I know of “The Odyssey” stems from various comic book and cartoon adaptions of it — and I don’t think I’ve read or seen any of those in at least 12 years. Of course, I had some assistance from my sister, as she’s supposed to have read this it back when she did her introduction courses to literary theory and history, but she was also kinda sketchy on it all. So that dimension didn’t exactly get its full potential exploited.

One of the weaknesses the film got from its status as an adaption, was that it seemed a bit rushed. Which, I’ll admit, is rather weird, seeing as it lasted for almost two hours. Never the less, I felt as if the Coens had tried to cram as much of “The Odyssey” as possible into a 90 minutes long movie, but had to face defeat and extend it to 102 minutes. One of the things I missed was a better establishment of some of the characters, and of some of the events — such as the “reform candidate”, the Klan rally, and some things like these. Because to me, they just didn’t feel very believable. (Damn, I managed to use the word “feel” in one form or other at least three times in this paragraph…)

Be that as it may, the plot was most entertaining. The story itself was as thrilling as can be expected in a comedy — what with all the escaping and pursuing and whatnot — despite its already mentioned weaknesses. The characters were surprisingly good for comedy characters (although surprisingly one dimensional for Coen characters), and quirky enough to be interesting all the way through, despite their relative lack of depth.

Also, some possible culture critique was put forth by Clooney’s character in the end, as he while floating on an artificial lake says some stuff about this being the start of e new era in the South. Science is coming, he says, and old superstitions will have to surrender to this new force. With today’s stereotyped image of the American South, however, this can just as well be a cheap joke. Whadda I know.

Anyhoo, a hilarious little movie, which I end up giving 8.5/10.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget the soundtrack. Lots of awesome folk and blues and stuff.