HOW about Homer's The Odyssey, re-writ large as a homage to Preston Sturges screwball comedy, set in 1930s Mississippi with a song-and-dance George Clooney? If anyone can, the Coen Brothers can.

Rooted in Sturges's Sullivan's Travels as much as Homer, O Brother has three convicts on the run from a chain gang in the dustbowl American South of the Depression era. Their mission is to find buried treasure but the mad, staring eyes of George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson tell you the cuckoo may have taken up residence in their heads.

By the end - and you wish this shaggy dog's tale did not have to end - conman Clooney and his dim partners have made a hit hick country record as the Soggy Bottom Boys, fallen under the spell of clothes-washing sirens of enchanting beauty, and crossed paths with a bank robber with a deficiency of marbles; a Bible salesman with a knock-out punchline (John Goodman); assorted outrageous politicians and Clooney's brood of six daughters.

This is a typically Mission Improbable tale by the Coen Brothers, told and filmed as beautifully as ever, lighter in tone than Miller's Crossing and Fargo, not as weird as Barton Fink, nor as substantial as Blood Simple or The Big Lebowski, but wonderful and original for all that. Be it the Klu Klux Klan dancing as if choreographed by Busby Berkeley, or the beguiling singing of the washer women, there are moments when the Coens take the breath away.

So, it must be said, does the performance of George Clooney. Eyes on stalks, moustache pencil slim, hair slicked back with pomade, he takes to screwball playing with ridiculous ease and grace. If he reminds you of Clark Gable, the impression is entirely intentional. Meanwhile, Coen favourite Turturro is as startling as ever.

Like Woody Allen's deceptively lightweight Sweet And Lowdown earlier this year, O Brother is a fantastical road movie with bygone music, rooted in immaculate period detail, surreal in its imagination and yet sufficiently close to reality to be regretful about the strange past making way for a more mundane present.