Hail, Caesar! (2016) Review

Hooray for Hollywood! I've seen a few Cohen Brothers movies, such as Fargo, Blood Simple, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski, and half of True Grit. One thing you can always count on the brothers for is quality filmmaking. Certain directors have a recognizable style, and they're no different. Yet, this one doesn't quite hit the right marks to make another Cohen Brothers classic.

Hail, Caesar! is a story about the waning studio system during the 1950's, the Golden Years of Hollywood. Josh Brolin plays Eddie Manix, a fixer whose job it is to make sure the positive public image of the stars remains intact at a fictional studio named Capitol Pictures. Things get radically more complicated when their biggest star, Baird Whitlock, (George Clooney) goes missing.

This is a star-studded affair, which isn't always a good thing (Movie 43 anyone?). This has George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Ralph Fiennes, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Tilda Swinton, and others. The story mostly follows Josh Brolin as he tries to find out what happened to Whitlock, but switches to other sub-plots involving the different stars of the studio. The first thing I loved about this film was the quality of the production. The cinematography from Oscar-nominated Director of Photography Roger Deakins is fantastic and when there is a scene taking place on a film set, you really feel like you are watching a technicolor movie from the 1950's. When the film switches to the outside world, we get the familiar Cohen Brothers dark "real-world" lighting of dimly-lit rooms with spotlights, which is a stark contrast to the bright colorful world of the movies (symbolism!). I can easily see this film being nominated for cinematography at the Academy Awards.

Now for what I didn't like. I really didn't care much for the story. When you find out what the film's big reason is for the kidnapping, you're like..."huh?" The Cohen Brothers are known for their over-the-top stories and characters, yet this one doesn't feel as organic. What makes the characters in Fargo or The Big Lebowski so funny was that they were over-the-top personalities in a very real and dark world. The world in this film isn't dark or serious, and when the overall plot is revealed, the stakes don't feel very high at all. In fact, if I didn't know it was directed by the Cohen Brothers, I would have guessed that it was directed by Wes Anderson because of how silly it is sometimes. The humor isn't all that great either. A few moments made me laugh, but mostly it felt awkward and forced. One bit went on forever and I just wanted the scene to end.

Ultimately the movie feels like an ode to the Golden Years of Hollywood, when musicals, westerns, epics, romantic dramas, and McCarthyism were everything. The story doesn't feel properly fleshed out, and the tone is all over the place. If you are a big fan of that era of films and want a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes of how it was ran, this might not be the film for you. I think I'd just watch a documentary instead. But hey, you get to see Channing Tatum in an awesome musical number!