“I know you hit a rough patch,” Larry Gopnik is told near the end of the film. That’s the understatement of the year. For 105 minutes the Coen Brothers throw shit in the face of Larry Gopnik, and, by proxy, the faces of the audience. I can’t say I enjoyed it. At best it sparks a few good laughs but only because, amidst the unrelenting shitstorm, the audience grasps anything resembling entertainment.

The Coens’ last outing, Burn After Reading, was an inconsequential piece (I know that was the intention; it only made it more irritating) carried by the star-power of Messrs. Pitt and Clooney. Here they eschew stars and attempt to craft a meaningful, sympathetic lead. Sadly, Larry Gopnik is simply pathetic.

Gopnik finds himself surrounded by marionettes. You can see the strings moving these characters, but their puppet masters haven’t mastered many of the strings. Consequently the supporting characters only ever pull up their arms, extend their elbows, and throw shit in Larry’s face.

Gopnik is likely to miss tenure, his wife wants to leave him, his kids are brats, his brother a leech, he has no friends, and the rabbis he visits for advice offer only meandering anecdotes. Gopnik also has no talent or ambitions. He’s a loser. Woody Allen has made this film better (Crimes and Misdemeanors) and funnier (Deconstructing Harry). Plus, Allen’s lead characters are sympathetic because they actually have personalities.

When the Coens run out of steam they decide dream sequences will pad things out, they decide Gopnik’s son can get stoned before his packed out bar mitzvah and they throw in a foxy neighbour with scant morals and surplus marijuana (in suburban Minnesota, in 1967). So, despite the slow pace, a pervading sense of frustration – heck, despite the fact it’s dull – it’s also highly implausible.

For the third time in a row, the Coens end on a cop-out. Leave your story in the air once and it might be interpreted as cleverness; do so thrice and it can only be interpreted as laziness.

This is the Coen Brothers on autopilot and, while the film has a few neat comic touches, and a brilliant prologue, it fails. The Coens have bought into their hype but they have nothing new to say on the topic of a middle-aged man lacking purpose. They are certainly able film-makers; they are not philosophers. The sooner they realise that the better.