After watching other films by the well-known and acclaimed Coen brothers in the past, my verdict on the films tends to be the same: “It was technically good, and I enjoyed it, but I don’t know what to make of it.”
My verdict for Hail, Caesar! is almost exactly the same.
While it’s not as heavy as Fargo, Hail, Caesar! delivers similar quirkiness and strangeness of plot. The film trailers promised an amazing cast with lots of lighthearted laughs in a love letter to old Hollywood films.
While all of these things are delivered, there’s an entirely different layer about communism and manipulation and an extremely underdeveloped villain.
Despite this, the strong suits of this film are the comedic acting and the atmosphere. George Clooney plays a wonderful dopey star. Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton all deliver hilarious cameo performances.
Alden Ehrenreich is absolutely hysterical as another stupid leading man from the cowboy genre struggling to fit into a period drama, and Josh Brolin leads them all with a strong performance as the film studio’s management.
There are even two unnamed extras that deliver a performance that laughed me to tears without ever saying a word.
I especially enjoyed the vignettes of different films on different sound stages in the time period. I almost think the film would have been near perfect and certainly very fun if it just focused on telling separate stories from each soundstage with their quirky leading characters.
The strange communism plot point pulls away from the enjoyable mains, leaving the majority of them underdeveloped and throwing the audience for a confusing loop.
Even though I had my problems with it and still really can’t fully comprehend what I saw, I still had fun with this movie and especially enjoyed being able to recognize all the different types of actors and politics in the film business.
It’s well made, well-acted and it’ll give you a few good laughs before Deadpool and How to be Single premiere next week.