HAIL CAESAR (2106)
Directed by Ethan and
Joel Cohen
Universal, 106
minutes, PG-13
½
I really like the Coens, a sibling collaboration that
usually takes comedy to offbeat and surreal places. Sometimes, as in the case
of Barton Fink or The Hudsucker Proxy, it takes a second
watching to see what they are trying to do, but the Coens are never dull–until
now. I wondered why Hail Caesar
exited my local cinema faster than a teenage boy slapped by his date, and now
I know. No one will ever watch this film twice, unless they are being tortured.
Were it not for the fact that the Coens never work with mega budgets–and this
film inexplicably made money thanks to DVDs and foreign release–this movie
would be mentioned in the same breath as bombs such as Heaven's Gate, The Lone Ranger, The Alamo, Pan, and The Adventures of
Baron Munchausen.
Speaking of Munchausen,
you'd have to look to some of Terry Gilliam's misfires to find a messier
pastiche of half-realized ideas. The Coens assembled a dynamite cast–including
Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Scarlet Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Jonah Hill,
Ralph Fiennes, Channing Tatum, and Frances McDormand—dressed them up in post-World
War II clothing, but sent them down a road that's less silly than embarrassing.
Putatively the film is an homage to Hollywood between the end of the war and
the beginning of the Blacklist. Its protagonist, Eddie Mannix (Brolin), is a
studio executive/fixer who's a cross between Sam Goldwyn and Sam Spade. We
follow him over the course of several very bad crisis-laden days. His studio,
Capitol Pictures, is trying to finish a few films, including a Gene Kelly-like
song-and-dance film in which the last number is constantly botched by a
sailor-clad lead who misses his exit cue and butt bumps other sailors in
sodomy-suggestive ways. Yes, we're talking that level of humor.
Speaking of sodomy, Eddie has a bigger problem. The
studio is about to put the wrap on a big-budget sword, sandal, and Jesus film,
the titular Hail Caesar–think The Robe (1953)–when his lead actor,
Baird Whitlock (Clooney) disappears. We shift from puerile stupid to profoundly
ridiculous. As it transpires, Whitlock has been kidnapped by a group of
communist writers who want to recruit him to their cause. He is holed up in a
Malibu beach house and forced to take part in communist study groups led by—dear
God!—Herbert Marcuse! Never mind that Whitlock is as dull as an anvil, our
commie scribblers are pretty sure they can turn him Red–by blackmail if
necessary. They know that he once did the nasty in a gay porno with one of Capitol
Studio's famed directors, Laurence Laurentz (Fiennes).
If only this was the least plausible thing in the film. How
about Tilda Swinton playing the dual role of rival sister gossip columnists?* Or
Scarlett Johansson as an unmarried Esther Williams-like swimmer whose pregnancy presents
moral issues for the studio, plus it makes her mermaid costume too tight? And
then there is Alden Ehrenreich playing Hobie Doyle, a dumb-as-dung cowboy actor
being (unsuccessfully) remade as a suave sophisticate. Why is he even in this
film? His storyline goes nowhere.
The adjective "dopey" sums up Hail Caesar. There are neither laugh-out-loud moments nor
noticeable production errors, so it's not even crummy enough to be future camp. There
are certainly no hidden subtexts (as in Barton
Fink) that make it worthy of deeper analysis. It is, simply, an
ill-conceived mess from first frame to last. Had I been in the theater as
opposed to my comfy recliner, I would have walked out in 20 minutes. Call Hail Caesar a rancid salad whose
ingredients were never meant to be mixed.
Rob Weir
*This is a riff on bickering columnists Hedda Hopper and
Louella Parsons, who were not sisters.
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