"Hail, Caesar!" Review

At one point in the Coen Brothers' new film, studio production chief Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) gathers a boardroom full of clergymen and heralds the fictional Hail, Caesar! as "a prestige picture featuring one of the biggest stars in the world." The Coen's Hail, Caesar!, despite also featuring one of the biggest stars in the world - George Clooney, falls far short of being a "prestige picture" in its own right. The film really amounts to nothing more than incomplete character arcs and a series of only marginally funny excuses to feature stars like Scarlett Johansson, Jonah Hill, and Frances McDormand.

The story follows Mannix as he juggles production duties on several films shooting on his Capitol Pictures backlot. When the star of his biggest blockbuster is kidnapped, Mannix tries to contain the situation by quietly enlisting the help of some of the studio's other contracted actors to find out what happened.

The marketing made this out to be a classic Coen caper more in line with The Big Lebowski than middle-of-the-road fare like Burn After Reading. Though Hail, Caesar! features many classic hallmarks of the Coens' work, including strong neo-noir elements and undertones of political paranoia, the simple narrative becomes lost in the tangled web it tries to weave. As a result, the whole endeavor ends up feeling loosely plotted and unfocused. An unnecessary subplot with Mannix fielding a job offer from Boeing is meant to add another dimension to the story (the threat of obsolescence) but instead leads the film to meander in more places than it needs to.

All the same, Hail, Caesar! taught me a valuable lesson that I should've learned by now - when it comes to the Coen Brothers, throw all expectations and pretensions out the window. I would like to see the film at least one more time to pick up any nuances I may have missed.

 For all its narrative flaws, Hail, Caesar! features lush production design that almost perfectly captures the spirit of "Old Hollywood." Film buffs will also love the allusions to the works and personas of industry legends such as William Wyler, Cecil B. DeMille, Gene Kelly, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Esther Williams.

C+