Hail, Caesar! is the latest offering from the auteur sibling duo the Coen Brothers, who have been on quite a run of great films recently. Starting with No Country For Old Men back in 2007, almost every offering from the Coens has been a distinct, refreshing little masterpiece of human drama. The one film in this run I didn't care for was their 2008 all-star comedy, Burn After Reading. Hail, Caesar! is very much in the same vein as that movie, and it sadly did not resonate with me.
I love the Coens' comedy, but I think I love it when it is embedded inside a drama. The cheery accents that pepper the landscape of Fargo (1996), or the matter-of-fact attitudes surrounding the lead's slowly disintegrating life in A Serious Man (2009). Even Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), a decidedly bleak tale of artistry, finds humor in a cowboy played by Adam Driver, and a jammin' tune that has recently gone viral because it features Oscar Isaac and Driver together, both stars of the recent Star Wars entry.
Hail, Caesar! is a day-in-the-life comedy about a studio exec, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), whose job is damage control on all the various productions running on the backlot of the fictional Capitol Pictures, circa 1950s Hollywood. He's a devout Catholic who confesses every day that he's lying to his wife (his sin? He simply can't quit smoking). Drama comes when the lead actor of the studio's bible epic Hail, Caesar! (played by George Clooney) is kidnapped by a mysterious group that calls themselves the Future.
What follows is Mannix's attempt to recover Clooney's character, known as Baird Whitlock, as the movie sidesteps to various productions around the back lot. The movie is almost a series of sketches, the Coens' attempt to recreate old classic movies from the 50s that are not made anymore, as we visit a Western where the star is stunt-extraordinaire Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), an Esther Williams-style musical with synchronized swimming in a big pool led by DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson in an underwritten role), and a Gene Kelly-style musical where sailors sing about missing Dames with decidedly homosexual overtones, led by Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum).
What this adds up to I'm not sure. As separate parts, some of the Coens' funniest stuff comes out, including a scene where four religious leaders of separate faith discuss the studio's depiction of Jesus, and a fantastic scene where Cowboy hunk Hobie is reassigned to a stuffy drama directed by Lawrence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) which leads to a hilarious rapid-fire diction exchange (Would that it were so simple).
But again, it doesn't really come together. Mannix is the thread that stitches all this stuff together but as a lead character, and especially a Coen creation, he's rather boring. He's weighing a job offer that would promise him great stock options and retirement from his tightly-wound life at the studio, but I never felt his conflict about accepting this job. His decision at the end is supposed to be some sort of great revelation on his behalf, but for the audience it registers as flat, and unsurprising.
The stuff with Whitlock and the Future people is appropriately weird, but doesn't ever go anywhere and fizzles with a very bizarre twist. There are side plotlines galore including DeeAnna's out-of-wedlock pregnancy that could lead to a potential scandal, Tilda Swinton serving double-duty as sister gossip journalists, and Hobie being set-up with another starlet at the studio, which adds up to one overstuffed movie.
I guess I don't necessarily like when the Coens do straight comedy. I think the problem here is that, ultimately, there were seeds of great ideas, but the Coens tried to do everything and never successfully reigned it in to one concise whole. I love the idea of recreating all these old hokey movies, paying tribute while simultaneously lampooning (Hail, Caesar! is clearly a direct parody of Ben-Hur). And there are some genuinely funny scenes. But the movie never grabbed me, and I left the theater not thinking much about it. That's sad, because some of the Coens best work has stayed with me for days.
No comments:
Post a Comment