Anyone at least moderately versed in Hollywood cinema of the 1950s will find plenty of deadpan mirth in “Hail, Caesar!,” the Coen Brothers’ shambolic satire/homage to this tumultuous time in film history (opening today nationwide). As for the rest of the potential pool of moviegoers, particularly the under-30 set who haven’t seen a movie released before “Jaws?” Let’s just say there were a lot of walkouts at this week’s press screening.
“Hail, Caesar!” is the most esoteric Coen Brothers film since “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which was the most esoteric one since “A Serious Man,” and you can go down the line at least until 1991’s “Barton Fink”—a comedy cut from a similar insider’s cloth as this latest venture. The difference is that most of these movies were modestly budgeted indies that allowed for enormous profits on the strength of critical acclaim, whereas “Hail, Caesar!” is an eccentric niche picture masquerading as a mainstream, star-studded, $22 million big-tent comedy. For all its unorthodox charms, it is destined to flop like a salmon on a sailboat.
The title refers to a movie within the movie: “Hail, Caesar!” is a swords-and-sandals epic released by the fictional Capitol Pictures in the 1950s, a fatuous prestige pic about a Roman leader meeting Jesus. The production is soon blighted, however, when its mercurial star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) disappears, leaving studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) on damage control.
This is just one of Eddie’s concerns over an eventful day on the job. DeeAnna Moran (a mouthy, moll-ish Scarlett Johansson), an Esther Williams-like starlet known for her mermaid fantasias, has become pregnant out of wedlock. Hobie Doyle (the hilarious Alden Ehrenreich), a wooden cowboy actor with a limited vocabulary, has been assigned an “image change,” landing him in the ensemble of a frothing British director’s (Ralph Fiennes) stillborn adaptation of a costume drama. And a pair of sniping sisters-turned-gossip columnists in outrageous headpieces (both played by Tilda Swinton channeling Hedda Hopper) are breathing down Eddie’s neck with threats to publish rumors of Baird’s disappearance and/or a sex scandal from the star’s past.
Meanwhile, a representative from Lockheed Martin tempts Eddie, from the hellishly red confines as a Chinese restaurant, to abandon the film business and take a stress-free position at his company, which just detonated the first H-bomb at Bikini Atoll. Eddie picked the wrong time to try to quit smoking.
Since it’s revealed so early in the film, it’s hardly a spoiler to mention the reason for Baird’s vanishing act: He was kidnapped by a pair of extras and shuttled to a remote island retreat populated by blacklisted screenwriters spouting Communist propaganda. While it’s refreshing to see a director tackle the blacklist with humor following the ponderous self-importance of “Trumbo,” these are the most misbegotten moments in “Hail, Caesar!” Pedantic, snoozy, and missing the Howard Hawksian finesse of the scenes back at the studio.
Forget the Communist-infiltration gobbledygook: The movie’s raison d’etre are its playful deconstructions of vintage Hollywood tropes, often marrying winking satire with genuine affection—as with song-and-dance-man Burt Gurney’s (Channing Tatum in a sailor costume) run-through of a classic MGM-style musical number in all its choreographic imagination. The Coens satirize the unadventurous genre product of the era—other movies-within-this-movie include the western “Lazy Ol’ Moon” and the musical “Merrily We Dance”—from a place of infectious love.
If only “Hail, Caesar!” were a truly plotless procession of these sketch-like set pieces on studio lots. It would likely play to even more diminished audience than its present incarnation, but at last it would be pure manna for the movie-mad minority.
