A comedy based, very loosely, on the ultimate road trip, The Odyssey, this film follows Pete and Delmar; two clueless convicts chained both to one another and to equally clueless, but extremely articulate, Ulysses McGill. McGill has convinced his partners in chains to escape in order to recover the million dollars he buried on his property after an armored car robbery. The catch is that in a few days a local dam will flood the property placing the buried money at the bottom of a new lake. During their travels through Depression era America the trio meet a blind prophet, three sirens, a Cyclops of sorts, and a blues singer who's sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. They also get baptized, fight the KKK, record a best-selling record and rob a bank with cow-hating Babyface Nelson all before they even make it to the film's climax. Who says you don't get your money's worth in the movies these days?

The acting is great, the story hilarious and the atmosphere is wonderful, but the best thing about O' Brother Where Art Thou? is the music. Its old fashion blues and bluegrass soundtrack is performed so perfectly that even if you don't like that style of music you'll have to acknowledge the quality of what you hear in this film. I mean, who knew George Clooney could carry a tune; let alone sing this well? After hearing them it's easy to believe that he and his two cohorts in crime could become recording sensations in that time and place. With his Clark Gable mustache, maniacal expressions and rapid dialogue George Clooney gives one of his best, and funniest, performances to date as fast talking McGill. And the only real fly in the Dapper Dan ointment is that given the talented performances by John Turturro as Pete and Tim Blake Nelson as Delmar more time devoted to their characters would definitely have not been wasted. There were a couple of minor plot holes, but nothing noteworthy and all in all O' Brother Where Art Thou? deserved several Oscar nominations that it didn't get. So go see O' Brother Where Art Thou? before it has a chance to R-U-N-N-O-F-T