Had a less notable screenwriter presented the script for Burn After Reading to a studio, there probably would have been loud “are-you-kidding” chuckles emanating from the powers that be. When it’s a project coming from the writing/directing team of Joel and Ethan Coen, those laughs are bankable.

The Coen’s create diverse stories. Fargo (1996) was an offbeat comedy so absurd fans loved it or hated it. The dark and brooding Oscar winner, No Country for Old Men had much the same reaction from fans. Burn After Reading includes quirky characters like Fargo, yet it’s not quite as remote.

CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) has just lost his job, which is the perfect time for his philandering wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), to throw him out on his ear. She can now pressure Harry (George Clooney), the man she’s been having an affair with, to leave his wife. Harry doesn’t warm up to that idea because he’s sleeping with several other women.

Over at the Hard Bodies gym, two more nerds are plotting their future. The ditsy Linda Litzke (McDormand) is fixated on how to get the money she needs for four plastic surgeries. Gym manager Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) is interested in Linda and assures her she doesn’t need any surgery.

Doors seem to open Linda’s possibilities when she acquires a CD disc left in the gym. As Linda and fellow trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) look at the contents on the CD, they realize it has secret government “stuff.” They plan to blackmail the CIA official or sell the information to the Russians.

Frances McDormand, who’s married to Joel Coen and won the Academy Award for Best Actress in Fargo, returns with a quirkiness in Burn that only she can bring to the screen. Clooney is plumb goofy as a neurotic sex addict secretly working on a new invention. Since we’ve seen these actors in similar roles before, it’s Pitt who presents the craziest about-face here. There isn’t a moment on screen when the knucklehead Chad doesn’t bring a laugh, even when he’s threatening a CIA agent.

If Burn After Reading had been made in the 1930s, the screwball comedy might have starred the Marx Brothers, as each character is a comedic one-up of the next. The Coen’s cast is perfect. Fans have enjoyed seeing Clooney move from the stern and angry (Michael Clayton) side of the acting pendulum to a totally unexpected silly character in O Brother, Where Art There?

“We thought about a mix of characters, and a story, that might be interesting to see these actors play,” Ethan Coen said. “We wanted to write for actors that we know -- who we thought might be fun to throw together; George Clooney, Richard Jenkins, Frances McDormand, and Brad Pitt, each of whom we know and all of whom we have worked with before, except for Brad.”

Comics don’t come off well without their straight men. Osborne Cox is an outraged lush who offers Malkovich plenty of room to maneuver. Swinton’s character isn’t funny at all; in fact she’s rather snobbish. Yet Swinton plays her so straight-laced in the midst of her exploding world that she’s comical. CIA operatives, (David Rasche and J. K. Simmons) who really set the stage for the misfits, are typical no-nonsense agents whose one-liners are hilarious.

Although Burn After Reading can’t be labeled as groundbreaking or a must-see film, anyone who likes the Coen’s unpredictability and/or the movie’s cast members will find Burn After Reading quite amusing.

(Released by Focus Features and rated “R” for pervasive language, sexual situations, violence.)

Review also posted on www.reviewexpress.com.