Hail, Caesar!

One interesting thing about sibling filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen is that, as they have built up their quirky filmography, they have worked in just about every genre. They haven’t made a straight up horror or sci fi movie yet (though doesn’t that sound like a trip – a science fiction movie by the Coen brothers?) but they’ve made westerns, musicals, film noir, comedies, and gangster pictures. They clearly are great movie fans and know enough about the conventions of each genre to pay homage while often upending them to create their own take on each type of movie. Their range is wide and yet they always manage to maintain the distinctive combination of darkness, intelligence, and absurdity that is their hallmark. 

 It’s interesting that with their latest film, Hail, Caesar!, the Coens turn their attention to the movies themselves. They’ve been in this territory once before in 1991’s Barton Fink. But while Barton Fink was about a Hollywood outsider, Hail, Caesar! is all about the inside of the Dream Factory during the height of its powers in the 1950s.    

 

 Josh Brolin plays Eddie Mannix who was a real person and worked as a “fixer” for MGM studios. In the Coen brothers’ universe, Eddie is a fixer for Capitol Pictures and spends his days covering up starlets unexpected  pregnancies and getting stars out of doing jail time for drunk driving. He helps solve problems for the latest sword and sandal epic and the newest singing cowboy western, hopping from soundstage to soundstage. Brolin plays Mannix as a loyal company man and a wholesome husband and father who has to function as the grown-up in a sea of troubled Hollywood types.

 

The story begins when George Clooney’s character, Baird Whitlock, one of Capitol’s biggest stars who also happens to be a world-class drunk and womanizer, gets kidnapped and held for ransom in the middle of his latest movie, a Biblical epic called, of course, Hail, Caesar! Mannix works to rescue Whitlock, partly out of concern for the man but mostly out of concern for keeping the studio’s most expensive film on schedule. 

 Meanwhile, there are other subplots involving Mannix contemplating taking another job, Scarlett Johanson’s Esther Williams-like character trying to hide her pregnancy under a mermaid tail, and a marble-mouthed cowboy actor getting cast in an urbane drawing room picture.

All of it is fun, all of it looks great and is shot with the Coen brothers’ usual technical perfection.

The problem, and this is a problem for a comedy, is that the film isn’t terribly funny. It’s amusing, it’s pleasant, but it rarely actually makes you laugh. 

What it reminds me of are old fashioned museum recreations. You know, the big windows you look into and you see a mannequin cave man about to throw a spear at a stuffed buffalo? Everything in Hail, Caesar! looks great and is accurate in its historical detail, but ultimately it comes across as a little airless and posed. You know the buffalo is not really in danger. Of course, a kind of deadpan awkwardness is part of the Coen brothers’ schtick, but it works a lot better in many of their other films.

Another part of the problem of Hail, Caesar! is that nothing’s really at stake. Baird Whitlock’s kidnappers turn out to completely harmless and the communism they convert him to lasts for as long as it takes Eddie Mannix to slap it out of him. There are no real stakes and so it’s hard for the story to build any real steam. If you love classic era Hollywood like I do or enjoy seeing 21^st century stars playing dress up as 1950s stars, see Hail, Caesar! But if you are expecting the hilarity of Raising Arizona or the power of No Country For Old Men, wait for the next Coen brothers project. Maybe it will be that sci fi movie we’re all waiting for.