By Matt Soergel
Florida Times-Union

I'd follow the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, anywhere, cinematically speaking.

They could make a movie about the manufacturing of socks and it would be deadpan-hilarious. They could film the counting of chads, both dimpled and pregnant, and conjure up any number of exhilarating images.

So it's a given that O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a loose-limbed farce about three Depression-era convicts on the lam, will be entertaining. Bits and pieces of it, in fact, are close to brilliant.

Bits and pieces are all they remain, though, for this is one big, messy collage of a movie. The Coens throw all manner of things on this canvas. Only some of them stick.

George Clooney is a convict named Ulysses Everett McGill, who escapes from a Mississippi chain gang with a couple of dim partners, Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson).

Pete and Delmar remain sketches as the Coens expend their energy on McGill, an incompetent sort who nonetheless can talk real purty: "It's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart," he says, in just one of many mock pretentious pronouncements, most of which are amusing.

Within seconds of the film's start, it's clear Clooney is channeling Clark Gable here, with his slicked-back hair (Ulysses favors Dapper Dan hair pomade, a running joke), his little mustache and his roguish air of breezy nonchalance. He is fun.

The movie is filmed with a dusty, golden nostalgia, which is easy to look at, and T. Bone Burnett has come up with a killer soundtrack of old blues and folk songs.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? gets its title from Preston Sturges' 1941 film, Sullivan's Travels, in which a filmmaker played by Joel McCrea decides that will be the title of his next movie. But it's based -- loosely, as you might imagine -- on Homer's The Odyssey. So along the way, Ulysses and his buddies encounter a blind oracle, some tempting sirens on the rocks at water's edge and a monstrous Cyclops (Coen regular John Goodman). All are obstacles Ulysses must face before he can get home to his beloved Penny (Holly Hunter), who, theoretically at least, has been waiting for him all this time.

The Coen brothers, though, keep the convicts even busier. That means more adventures await: Among other episodes, they go on the run from coppers with Babyface Nelson; they record a hit single as Jordan Rivers and the Soggy Bottom Boys; and they witness the Busby Berkley dance stylings of the Ku Klux Klan.

It's as bizarre as it sounds and is often dryly amusing -- until it sputters out in a long, uninspired political subplot, which is capped by an ending that's almost as wild as the raining frogs at the close of Magnolia.

The Coens, in films such as Fargo, Blood Simple, Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski, were able to probe at the chilly heart of man while making you squirm and laugh. This series of sketches doesn't even try.

It's not that we can begrudge them for making what's essentially just a lark. It's just that, halfway through this odyssey, even their loyal fans may already be looking ahead, wondering what they'll be up to next.