Hail, Caesar!

I felt like I was being teased a lot of the time while watching Hail, Caesar!.  Here is a movie with a beautiful look, a first-rate cast, and some individual moments that generate some real laughs.  But it all fails to come together to create a satisfying movie.  I kept on looking for a heart and a purpose behind the movie, and all I could find is that the filmmaking duo of Joel and Ethan Coen really wanted to pay tribute to 1950s Hollywood, and have created some charming and very funny "film-within-a-film" segments, but failed to find a compelling plot to string everything together.

The movie is set at the fictional film studio, Capitol Pictures, which is kind of an in-joke to fans of the Coens, as that's the same studio that was featured in their 1991 film, Barton Fink.  That was a clear, concise film that featured strong performances and a real story.  This film, which features a bigger cast of stars and a much bigger budget, is much more meandering.  It's a rambling yarn that takes us onto a lot of sound stages where a variety of films, from a Busby Berkeley-style musical to a B-Western are being shot.  The movie pauses so that we can watch these movies being made.  All of these segments that recreate different kinds of films popular in the day are highly entertaining, and are easily the highlight of the entire movie.  But what do they have to do with anything?  If the Coens wanted to put their own unique spin on 50s film genres, they should have found a tighter narrative, or at least one that incorporated these numerous "mini movies" into the plot better so they don't completely stop the movie, as they often do here. 

George Clooney plays the biggest star in Hollywood, Baird Whitlock, who is currently starring in Capitol Pictures' latest epic, Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ.  An extra on the set of the film (Wayne Knight) happens to drug a chalice that Whitlock must drink from during a scene, rendering the actor unconscious a short time later when he is alone.  This results in the star being kidnapped and taken to a mysterious location.  With the studio's big production now on hiatus, everyone turns to the Capitol's main problem solver, Eddie Mannix (a low key but effective Josh Brolin).  He's the guy people hire to take care of a private celebrity problem, such as when a ditzy actress sneaks away in order to shoot some lurid photos at a photographer's house.  His job is to make sure any and all celebrity scandals are swept under the rug, even if it means paying off the police officers.  If your lead actress suddenly gets knocked up, and needs to disappear for a few months, only to reappear later with a baby she "adopted", Eddie Mannix is the man to call.

Eddie's job of keeping Hollywood as scandal-free as possible keeps him working all hours, which means little time for family.  He loves his job, but he's also being tempted with an offer by the Lockheed aircraft corporation, which is offering him more money and better hours.  However, he has little time to worry about that now, as the Baird Whitlock disappearance is currently taking up all his time, as he not only has to find out what happened to the star, but also control the media, in particular two gossip columnists, both twin sisters played by Tilda Swinton in a dual role.  While all this is going on, the plot is constantly getting sidetracked by other film projects going on at Capitol, as well as the stars.  This is mainly an excuse to get a large number of celebrity cameos, such as Scarlett Johansson showing up as the previously mentioned starlet who needs to disappear for a while after she gets pregnant.  There's also an accomplished British director (Ralph Fiennes) who is at the end of his rope dealing with the star the studio has picked to appear in his latest drama, a singing cowboy actor (Alden Ehrenreich) who has no place starring in an upscale drama, or delivering the kind of dialogue the director wants him to say.  Even Channing Tatum appears as a singing sailor in a musical number called "No Dames", which is a comedic highpoint of the entire film.

All of these sequences are ingeniously done, and the actors are obviously having a blast doing them.  They're fun to watch, but they also slow the film's pace to a crawl, as they really have nothing to do with the main plot itself.  In the end, Hail, Caesar! feels like it's constantly distracted.  The Coens get so wrapped up in recreating the era and styles of filmmaking that they forget they're also supposed to be keeping us engaged with the plot.  Unfortunately, the main plot itself is pretty thin soup.  Perhaps these movie segments/parodies were tossed in to spruce up the film.  A lot of them are effective, especially the ones surrounding the cowboy star, who gets some of the funnier moments in the film.  This is a movie that ultimately works in fits and starts.  Once in a while, it hits upon a great scene or idea, and you start to think the movie is going to really get rolling.  Then, it settles back down to more predictable territory.  I started to feel restless as the film went on.  It felt like it was on the verge of working so many times, only to disappoint me.  There are moments here that are wonderful, and some moments that get big laughs.  But the movie as a whole does not work, because these moments feel isolated.  The structure of the film simply does not flow.

If there's anything worse than a bad movie, it's one that seems to constantly be close to working and coming together, but it chooses to keep its audience at a distance.  There is potential in just about every frame of the film.  The cinematography is beautiful, as is the attempts to recreate old Technicolor film styles.  Even a lot of the film parodies tossed into the plot are spot on.  There are also a few individual moments within the main plot that had me laughing.  By all accounts, this is a strong movie.  It simply never comes together.  I never got into the universe and the story that the Coens were trying to tell.  I admired all of the cinematic details, but the plot and the script itself seemed like an afterthought.  This will be an invaluable film for movie geeks, who can relish in the in jokes and references to movies of the 50s.  But I wonder how general audiences will react to this?  I felt like I was so close to connecting with the movie, but it kept out of my grasp. 

Perhaps Hail, Caesar! works better as a film experiment than it does as a movie.  The directors obviously wanted to try their hand at a multitude of genres, and did their best to connect them into one story.  It doesn't quite work, but I have to admire the effort that went into the making of it.  This is a movie that's easy to admire, but hard to actually embrace.

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