HAIL, CAESAR (B+) - This sly valentine to a dysfunctional Hollywood of the early 1950s feels both overstuffed and undercooked. But it's often a delight.
The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, along with crack cinematographer Roger Deakins, imagine a zippy world of kooky characters and the pop philosophy of God and capitalism. They employ an impeccable cast as they cleverly produce several movies at once, jamming them together into a slapdash stew of slapstick and satire.
Where to start with the cast? Josh Brolin, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum. Some of them, like McDormand as a Hobbit-like film editor, show up for just one or two quick scenes. Alex Karpovsky (old-man Ray of "Girls") steals his only scene with two glares.
Clooney plays Baird Whitlock, a leading lunkhead cast as the lead in a Roman epic styled like a Cecil B. Demille extravaganza. With the aid of two "lurking extras" on the set (Wayne Knight (Newman!) and Jeff Lewis), a band of Communist intellectuals (calling themselves The Future) kidnaps Whitlock and brings him to the cabal's oceanside retreat for some gentlemanly brainwashing. Brolin is Eddie Mannix, the head of production at Capitol Pictures who must keep the circus from spinning out of control. He's trying to quit smoking, pay some attention to his wife and kids, and consider chucking it all and accepting a job offer with a big military contractor. And he needs to find his superstar, while fending off inquiries from twittering twin-sister gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker (both played with glee by Swinton).
Meantime, the studio head insists that Mannix saddle director Laurence Laurentz (Fiennes) with a ropin' and ridin' cowboy actor, Hobie Doyle (a wonderful Alden Ehrenreich), in Laurentz's stodgy drawing-room drama. The prim and stuffy Laurentz calls Hobie a "ro-day-o clown" and nearly bursts an aneurysm trying to get the cowpoke to learn the line "Would that it were so simple." Their minute-long rapid-fire tete-a-tete over the line is a delirious highlight, echoed deftly in a call-back later in the film when the punch-line finally drops.
Brolin has grown adept at carrying a film, as he did in "Inherent Vice." His Mannix is an obsessive-compulsive type. He goes to confession ... religiously ... and every time he checks his watch it happens to be the top of the hour (a classic Coen quirk). He also rescues starlets from compromising situations (paying off cops and keeping scandals out of the papers) and juggles the various film projects, including a musical full of sailors, starring Burt Gurney (Tatum) leading an epic toe-tapping dance number.
The comedy clicks (although Clooney often seems disconnected), while the underlying themes examining religion and capitalism tend to get drowned in the mix. Another viewing might suss out whether those more sober narrative threads are handled subtly or just lazily. It certainly isn't a tossed-off film; there's heft to it. But on a first pass through, it's the laughs that linger.
BONUS TRACKS
Here's a good test. If you find this funny, you'll enjoy "Hail, Caesar":
The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday, a respected critic, offers her "definitive" ranking of every Coen Brothers movie. You can almost invert her list and you'd get mine. I haven't seen all of their films (I don't get paid to watch movies), but here is her ranking, followed by mine.
Washington Post
- Fargo
- Miller's Crossing
- Raising Arizona
- Blood Simple
- Inside Llewyn Davis
- O Brother, Where Art Thou
- Barton Fink
- Hail, Caesar
- Burn After Reading
- True Grit
- The Hudsucker Proxy
- Intolerable Cruelty
- The Big Lebowski
- A Serious Man
- The Man Who Wasn't There
- No Country for Old Men
- The Ladykillers
- Fargo
- No Country for Old Men
- A Serious Man
- Raising Arizona
- Blood Simple
- The Man Who Wasn't There
- Barton Fink
- The Big Lebowski
- Hail, Caesar
- Miller's Crossing
- True Grit
- Inside Llewyn Davis
- The Hudsucker Proxy
- O Brother, Where Art Thou?
- (Not seen): Burn After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers.
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