It’s a Hooray for Hollywood musical comedy written, produced, directed, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen, the latest entry on their extensive resume, which includes Fargo, Blood Simple, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink, Burn After Reading, True Grit, Raising Arizona, and Inside Llewyn Davis.
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With Hail, Caesar!, the perpetually subversive Coens may have actually subverted subversion by making their hero the suit who would be the villain in any other showbiz movie. “Joel said. “[Why] they would single out a particular movie and say, ‘Why aren’t there black or Chinese or Martians in this movie? “We always want to do something that’s different from what we have done before”.
Be sure to check out Hail, Caesar!, in theaters everywhere this Friday! Designed by artist JC Richard, the poster depicts protagonist Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), dwarfed by the soundstage of Capitol Pictures where he works as a fixer.
Eddie finds his considerable problem-solving acumen tested when Baird Whitlock (game George Clooney, in his fourth Coen Bros. joint), the affable-but-dim star of Capitol’s in-production religious epic Hail, Caesar!, is kidnapped.
While trying to figure out who’s making anonymous ransom demands for Baird, Eddie also has to deal with the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), an Esther Williams-like swimming star.
In the Coen Brother’s fantasy, he is refashioned into a sensible and likable man charmingly performed by Josh Brolin. “They are so thorough that it does a lot of the job for you”. “It sort of evolved as it went along”. “Why are we doing this?”
We get to watch as America’s fantasies are brought to life. Unfortunately, because there were so many stars in the movie and so much going on plot wise, nobody really got the chance to shine and stand out in any memorable way.
Actress Jenna Dewan poses at the premiere of ‘Hail, Caesar!’ in Los Angeles February 1, 2016. Hobie’s cowboy movie was filmed at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park, where countless Westerns have been shot.
The cast was terrific, but, while it was a nice change, I wasn’t that enthralled watching Clooney play the Buffoon. Hail, Caesar! finds the writer/directors in a surprisingly generous frame of mind, with a naïve soul like Hobie still being a stand-up guy, and even the most pompous artistes proving to be team players.
“It’s still storytelling, so it’s still hard to control”, Ethan says.
That was some 15 years ago, and it took them a while to get around to writing it.
On paper, the prospect of getting the moviemaking Coen Brothers’ take on what we think of as Hollywood’s “Golden Age” is close to irresistible.
And their new barrel-of-monkeys period piece, Hail, Caesar! “He seemed like an unlikely movie character”. The same priest will later instruct Mannix to say five “Hail Marys” for slapping around the world’s biggest star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). The pair were tasked by MGM to hush up any potential scandal, and in Hollywood lore they supposedly covered up some juicy ones.
Adds Joel: “It’s very, very loosely this idea that Mr. Schenk is God and Eddie is the son of God”. I absolutely loved the movie, but it seems like it was made for me and six other people. They celebrate the movies of this era and have some good-natured fun at the expense of the system that produced them.
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“He has very little movie-star vanity and great comic timing”. They may not make them like they used to, but at least they still make them like this.
