A new Coen brothers movie? This early in the year? It’s must be a gift sent straight from the movie gods, considering this is usually the time of year when nearly everything that comes is garbage. Even if the movie fails in comparison to some of the Coen’s best work, it’s still a humorously fun time. Set around a large movie studio in the 1950s, the movie largely follows a Hollywood fixer played by Josh Brolin, who darts back and forth across the lot, struggling to keep the various stars and talent in line. Of course, the most notable of these is the kidnapping of the studio’s biggest star, Baird Whitlock, played by Geroge Clooney, who is set to star in a large prestige biblical movie.
Clooney has worked with the Coen’s several times before. The writer/director duo have a gift for getting ridiculous and goofy performances out of Clooney and here is no exception. But Whitlock is not the only star that Brolin’s character has to deal with. There is also the hot tempered star of several “mermaid pictures” (Scarlett Johansson) and a former western actor (Alden Ehrenreich), now miscast in a prestige drama about upper class aristocrats. Rounding out the cast are a variety of other big name actors such Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Channing Tatum, and Jonah Hill.
The Coen brothers are known for their skill in dark comedy, but “Hail, Caesar!” has less of the atmospheric quality of movies like “Fargo,” “Barton Fink” or “Inside Llewyn Davis” than it does the some of the duo’s goofier works like “Raising Arizona,” “O’Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “The Big Lebowski.” The jokes here don’t always hit but when they do, audiences are sure to be laughing till it hurts. One scene in particular, which show’s the Coen’s obsession with language and the way people speak, sees the former western star played by Ehrenreich struggle to pronounce his lines through his thick country accent.
More than anything else, the movie offers the Coen Brothers a chance to dabble in several different kinds of genres from old Hollywood. Everything from Bible epics to musicals. Sometimes these sequences make the movie feel sporadic, almost as if they were just a series of sketches in one elaborate sketch show. However, this is the Coen Brothers going for simple entertainment as opposed to anything big think piece and there is nothing wrong with that. Even when the movie begins to lose focus or drift, it still remains highly entertaining. It’s both a celebration of old Hollywood and a satire on the studio system as a whole. In some ways the movie chooses to satirize this system as a factory churning out a product, not art, and pulling every string imaginable to ensure that product is not tarnished.
Rating: 4/5
Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures