Clips from The Filthy Critic's review of the film A Serious Man, directed by the Coen Bros. (a modern era retelling of The Book of Job):
"Michael Stuhlbarg plays the modern-day Job, a physics professor with a wife and two kids. He's a little uptight, Job-like in his upright standing, and, well, that's all we know about him. He isn't fleshed out beyond that. The Coens don't give a rip about him other than to put him through the paces, the way fourteen high-school football players would with a passed-out cheerleader. So, maybe they're playing God, here. And they too don't come off too well. Not to say God would date rape a cheerleader, of course. But really, I don't know. I've never met him. At the least, he would let it happen."
"[The] conclusion is cute, not profound. That's especially true since there is little philosophically in A Serious Man that expands on what some dude wrote a few thousand years ago. All the Coens do is bring the story up to the 1960s and wrap it up in this fetishized version of what they remember as a shitty, suffocating childhood. That is where the movie dumps its load on your face."
"The characters don't get to have a reason to exist or a brain in their heads that isn't singularly focused on being a dick. None of that is because the story needs it that way. In fact, the story would be far more profound and enjoyable if the characters were deeper and yet shit still happened. It's because the Coens are whiny little bitches."
