When the Hollywood mogul Harry Cohn said he judged a film's merit by whether he could sit through it without fidgeting, a wag lamented the thought of "the world wired to Harry Cohn's ass". Watching Burn after Reading - a hardworking comic frivol from the brothers who made No Country for Old Men - I had a despairing vision of the Coens auctioning themselves off to populism and turning into a kind of twin-pack Harry Cohn. The raised hammer, the auctioneer's voice: "Coen, Coen . . . Cohn!"

The film is promisingly exuberant for 30 minutes. John Malkovich, late of the nightmare cameo in Mutant Chronicles , does dream line-readings as a CIA analyst who implodes after being asked to clear his desk. He delivers a selection of classic Coen zingers, then tramps off to wife Tilda Swinton, a two-timing human icicle who melts daily, unknown to Malkovich, in the arms of federal marshal George Clooney. Now factor in Frances McDormand as a gym employee who dreams of plastic surgery and stumbles on a blackmail-useful CD of Malkovich's unpublished memoirs - and whose scheme picks up pace when a lonely hearts ad leads her to Clooney - and you have the ingredients for a classic screwball farce.