Years ago, Prairie Home Companion ran one of their mock radio ads for Merle and Mavis Do Favorite Broadway Hits. Robin and Linda Williams ran through (as in butchered) a bunch of Broadway musicals in full bluegrass speed and nasality (try to picture Tonight from West Side Story as done by Flatt and Scruggs...). The ad delightfully (and apocryphally) quoted Leonard Bernstein thusly:

"It's really something for what it is..."

I think many movies are better watched with this evaluation in mind. My family has an affectionate term for a category of films: "StupidMovie", all one word, for those films which have dumb premises, or goofy dialog, or bad miscasting, or serious plot contradictions, but from which we still get pleasure viewing for one reason or another.

I think that trying to compare bits of fluff like "Oh, Brother..." to a serious cinematic masterpiece is a mistake - yes, it got a lot of hype from movie critics and the press, but that's because they get paid to blather serious analyses of everything, including "Dumb and Dumber", "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective", etc.

I've enjoyed the Coen Brothers films I've seen - Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski and Oh, Brother, because I enjoy the quirky non-sequiturs they throw at you, and I like trying to figure out the smug in-jokes and cross-references. Other people don't; that's OK, we don't all have to like the same kind of movies. I guess some folkies' disappointment in films like Songcatcher and Oh, Brother was caused by the mainstream press treating both as revelations of folk music, simply because they (the press) have nothing with which to compare the portrayals and renditions of the music and music makers in those movies, and we do.

That's OK, though - they were really something for what they were!