As you have experienced in the past, there are really two kinds of movies: those that are fun to watch and keep you on the edge of your seat, and those that are hard to watch and lose your interest from being a plain bad movie or just missing the wow factor. It's only every once in a great while that you come across a film that is a hybrid of the two. We'll call it the "hard to figure out" category. I guess you could consider this type of film an achievement all on its own but I wouldn't dwell too much on that notion this time around.
Well, I hope that was a good enough intro for you and maybe it'll soften the blow on what has become Hail, Caesar!
The Coen Brothers (Joel and Ethan) are what one would call a dynamic duo. That's an easy reference to make and even a bit of an under statement when discussing the minds who brought to the screen Fargo (1996), No Country For Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010), and what could be their crown jewel, The Big Lebowski (1998). Like Tarantino, if they wrote the script then there's a pretty darn good chance they'll share the director's seat. Hail, Caesar! is not an exception to this Coen tradition but it does fall off the beaten path when it comes to the Coen plot. Or any plot, for that matter.
When you see names like Clooney, Brolin, Tatum, Johansson, and Fiennes lit up on a marquee you can expect a pretty show to follow. All are actors with considerable film records and frequented by big box office turnouts. Now, what went wrong this time?? Why was Hail, Caesar! so difficult to follow? And where oh where was the storyline?
 |
| Alden Ehrenreich and Ralph Fiennes as Hobie Doyle and Laurence Laurentz. |
Okay okay, let's start with what we know. Josh Brolin is Eddie Mannix. He's a strong arm in 1950s Hollywood and the type of producer that you want to work for and he'll get you to perform one way or the other. He's a big shot with Capitol Studios and is now trying to wrap up two soon-to-be huge blockbuster hits, until, the 1950s equivalent to George Clooney as well as star of one of the films is kidnapped. Next, there's George Clooney playing the kidnapped Baird Whitlock. He's filming Capitol Studios' "Hail Caesar!" (I know it's confusing but bear with me) and is drugged then swept up by a couple of set extras while still wearing his Roman guard costume (which he spends the entire movie in). Turns out, the captors that are holding him in a rather amazingly retro beachfront house are disgruntled screenwriters who have adopted the practices of communism. Who'da thought!
On the other side of the set is Ralph Fiennes as critically acclaimed director Laurence Laurentz (get it?). His feature film, "Merrily We Dance", stars the hottest new talent on the block, Hobie Doyle. Hobie is a twangy southern boy with a bright future in the world of Westerns. Too bad "Merrily We Dance" is not a western but an average romantic-comedy that requires a tuxedo over leather chaps and feels to Doyle as if the saddle's been tied a little too tight for this cowboy. Note: a particularly hilarious sequence mixing Laurentz's British fluidity and Doyle's clumsy manner is what this film needed much more of.
 |
| Josh Brolin stars as executive producer Eddie Mannix. |
After a lot (I hate to admit) of contemplating what this could be classified as, I came to kind of a conclusion: I believe it is meant to be a satire on the communist "agenda" of Hollywood during the actual making of huge films with huge stars back in the 50s and 60s. Even saying that makes me wince because it still doesn't cover the incompleteness of what the filmmakers seemed to be striving for. Oh yeah and Scarlett Johansson's in it, too, I had almost forgotten. GRADE: 6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment