Hail Caeser

Hail Caesar

This is probably the most disappointing Coen film I have seen. The movie has a gaggle of A listed stars which fractionalizes the movie since each one has to have their little star turn. The main stars are George Clooney and Josh Brolin. Clooney is the hapless lead in a Roman epic and Brolin is an overwrought studio executive who fixes problems. Clooney resurrects his character in the Coen movie “O Brother Where Art Thou”, who was also dimwitted. His humor here is more physical than verbal. Brolin is also funny running from crisis to crisis. The setting is post war Hollywood with the studio system still pervasive.

The comedy is mostly physical and stretches with slow drama. Some scenes go on too long. One set up has Channing Tatum dancing with a bunch of sailors (very well I may add). They did the entire Busby Berkley dance routine instead of doing a shortened version. There is a tread of a plot weaving the stars together. But it unravels with Tatum boarding a Soviet submarine off the coast of California. This refers to the Red Scare during the period.

Scarlet Johnson is an Ester Williams type with a staccato low class New Jersey accent. She has a separate plot line dealing with an illegitimate child. Her interaction with Jonah Hill lasts about three minutes.

The Coen brothers are paying homage to a by gone Hollywood that millennials, and others, will have difficulty relating to. The movie is self-indulgent, with the Coens resurrecting long dead actor types. An inside joke has a cabal of misguided scene writers exhorting money from the studio; the Coen brothers are writers too.

This is a slight film wasting copious talent. The film’s attempt at farce is lacking. Instead of the theater a better value would be “On Demand”.