Film Review: ‘Hail, Caesar!’ delivers laughs, even if it still underwhelms
Ethan and Joel Coen are as film-history literate as any current director not named Quentin. “Hail, Caesar!”, their latest, is their second film to explicitly tackle Hollywood, following the 1991 “Barton Fink,” their fourth film and first masterpiece. While that film had a lot of humor, it was basically dark.
“Hail, Caesar!”, on the other hand, is straight-out comedy, closer in tone to the underestimated “Intolerable Cruelty.” It’s a Hollywood fantasy about Hollywood fantasy, set near the end of the period when studios did their best to control the lives of their stars — invaluable assets with a tendency to do scandalous things.
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Josh Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, a studio executive in charge of covering up whatever embarrassing situation these assets have gotten themselves into. (The last time we saw Mannix, he was being played by Bob Hoskins, in “Hollywoodland,” the 2006 George Reeves biopic. The time before that, he was played by...well...Eddie Mannix, in real life.)
The Coens don’t claim “Hail, Caesar!” to be based on a true story, as they’ve done coyly on some films that weren’t. “Hail, Caesar!” is very loosely based on the real Mannix; they’ve goosed up reality in the name of laughs and to serve their own thematic interests. (It’s unlikely that the real Mannix’s life was full of the wacky behavior that is the source of much of the humor.)
The film is set in 1951, during Mannix’s period as a powerful studio executive at MGM, here called Capitol Pictures. We first see him in confession, seeking penance for sneaking a few cigarettes — he’s supposed to be giving up smoking — and other trivial sins. He’s a man plagued by feelings of guilt, feelings he can never express in public. He doesn’t know what a bad day he’s about to have.
Financier Nicholas Schenck — the studio’s New York-based ultimate boss — insists that Mannix put singing cowboy star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) in a high-society drama being directed by Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes). Doyle, unfortunately, still sounds like a cowboy. Laurentz’s attempt to school him is not quite as funny as the equivalent scene in “The Loved One” (1965), where John Gielgud has to teach a British accent to Dusty Acres (Robert Easton).
DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), the Esther Williams-like star of popular aquatic musicals, is pregnant without benefit of wedlock. Dance star Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) seems distracted. Twin gossip columnists (Tilda Swinton) are competing with one another to get a scoop from Mannix.
And then, to cap things off, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is kidnapped from the set of “Hail, Caesar!” — a Biblical epic he’s starring in. When Mannix gets a ransom note, he has to figure out what to do.
The parody/pastiche/homage Capitol Studios productions, while exaggerated, are remarkably accurate and provide some of the best moments. Johansson, in a mermaid outfit, is surrounded by other swimmers choreographed in kaleidoscopic, surreal Busby Berkeley style. Even more extraordinary is an extended dance number where Tatum — dressed to invoke Gene Kelly — taps his way around a bar, together with a bunch of his Navy cohorts.
There are throwaway references to “Vertigo,” “Sweet Smell of Success,” “Ben-Hur,” Carmen Miranda, and (astoundingly) Marxist professor Herbert Marcuse.
The numerous setups in “Hail, Caesar!” create many pleasures, yet the humor still feels a little underpowered. There is little to criticize, but this is far from the Coens’ funniest work.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).