A Serious Man is a mid-level Coen movie; Not as grand as Fargo or No Country, not as humble as The Man Who Wasn’t There. Not as memorable as Lebowski, not as forgettable as Intolerable Cruelty. Not as good as Barton Fink or as bad as The Ladykillers. I guess you could chuck it in the pile with Miller’s Crossing, except it’s more interesting and more distinctively Coen than that.

The movie is sort of a light comedy spread thin over a light drama about a middle-class suburban guy whose life is falling apart. His wife is leaving him, his kids are indifferent to him, he has problems at work…

Acutally, you know what it is? It’s a Jewish American Beauty. It’s about all of the same things — the stifling mundaneness of suburbia and the status quo, a midlife crisis that offers a brief glimpse of freedom before it comes crashing down, wonder at the nature of existence — with a few extra trips to the rabbi, and the convoluted parables that come out of them.

In the hours after watching I’m sure I had something more incisive to say. A week or two later, the movie has faded into a muddle.