Hail, Caesar! is one of those films where you’re smiling all the time … waiting, waiting, waiting for that big laugh. As it never comes, you’ll just have to appreciate how clever the Coen brothers are. And, let’s face it, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen are awfully clever. And if you’re asking, “why is he spelling out ‘Ethan Coen and Joel Coen’ instead of saying Ethan & Joel Coen?” It’s because they have two imdb pages, not one –which seems kinda silly to me.
Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin, in what I consider his best role, period) is devout Catholic and Capitol Pictures Studio fixer. Not sure what his real title is. Fact is, Eddie works 24/7 solving the problems
of actors/directors/studio heads/PR people. He also squeezes in confessional time, rival head hunters and a touch of family somewhere in there. Not sure he sleeps. The problems involved in making movies are many and we get a good taste when big deal actor Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) goes missing from the studio’s most expensive production: Hail, Caesar!
Meanwhile, the studio Roy Rogers (Alden Ehrenreich) has been asked to take a role he is incapable of handling and the studio Esther Williams (Scarlett Johansson) is single and pregnant. So while the twin buzzards of Hollywood reporters Thora Thacker/Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton/Tilda Swinton) treat Mannix like carrion, he has to make peace with director Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), find a suitor for his mermaid, recover his star actor from kidnappers and entertain an offer from Lockheed for more money/better hours. I’m sure I missed two or three other things in there; apparently nobody else can solve these problems.
The movie here is an excuse to relive the feel of a post-War Hollywood movie studio. I’ve no doubt there was a metric ton of research invested in 1951. You can see the Coens just having a blast recreating the classic themes of the post-WWII film era – the biblical epic (our title film), the swabbie musical, a synchronized swimming drama, the family oater pic, and the 
high society romance. I’d be remiss in not mentioning this is Channing Tatum’s second straight excellent supporting role (this and Hateful Eight) – it would seem he has good people.
Hail, Caesar! has one of the best trailers in recent history, so it’s a shame that I feel like this review is damning with faint praise. But it is. And it should be. For all the fun of recreating 1950s Hollywood, there really isn’t a ton of fun here for mainstream audiences. At one point, our Roy Rogers attends a screening of his western musical comedy and while the other invitees about him are falling over themselves in exaggerated spasms of laughter, he just looks kind of puzzled. While the scene is meant to demonstrate the neophytic actor doesn’t really get humor, I was with him. And I kinda felt sorry for the extras who comprised the 1950s audience forced to laugh on cue as if the screen of a grizzled prospector diving in a water trough to catch the moon was some sort of entertainment bumper crop.
It’s certainly a unique point of view to hoist the company fixer above all in the studio hierarchy. I know this is a comedy, but the Coens here have made every other Hollywood denizen here a feckless tool. The talent comes off as stooges, the writers as traitors, the press as gnats … even the dailies hermit (Frances McDormand) needs Mannix to get her out of a jam. I feel myself even now apologizing on behalf of the Coens for their treatment of writers, but seriously fellas, the Hollywood blacklist was a black eye on politics and films in this country and here you’ve made the rather absurd statement -albeit in comic form- that the writers deserved being treated as turncoats. I’m going to assume it’s all tongue-in-cheek, which would be poignant if the film were a tad funnier … or a lot funnier. Hail, Caesar! is a very well done, but also very flawed, film.
♪Cares of the past are behind
Only cares what he’ll find
Idiot slarlets are blind
Straightening out that unholy Hollywood
See him rambling around
Making sure all things are sound
Cleaning all mess to be found
Straightening out that unholy Hollywood♫
Rated PG-13, 106 Minutes
D: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
W: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Genre: The Coens host history
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Film historians
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Victims of the red scare
♪ Parody inspired by “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”
I really wanted to like this one more. I loved the trailer and was eager to buy my ticket. Still the funniest bit in the film involved peripheral characters (spoiled by one of the trailers) – “If only it were so simple.”
Channing Tatum was terrific, as was Brolin, and Clooney did a fine job at playing a clueless dope. All in all, I did leave the theater with a shrug, wishing it lived up to the trailer’s hype.
I’m totally with you, and so were my companions. However, I quite appreciated this film from an historical perspective. The selection of “what films a studio might be making in the early 1950s” was inspired, even if the comedy was not.