"Uh, is it hard to dance with all them bananas on your head?"

Rating: 8/10 (28 April 2019)

Perhaps it helps if one is a connoisseur of movies from the Forties and Fifties; this was a wonderful Coen Brothers send up of a host of film genres with recognizable character references to stars of the past. For starters, there was a real life Eddie Mannix, an American film studio executive and producer for MGM. Josh Brolin does the honors of portraying Mannix, with a full plate of studio problems that require his immediate attention. Tilda Swinton portrays twin gossip columnist sisters, Thora and Thessaly Thacker, and one could reasonably assume the characters represented furious rivals Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, but they weren't actually sisters. So with a little bit of a stretch, you might consider Swinton's portrayals to represent advice columnists Ann Landers and Dear Abby, twin sisters both working under a pen name. Then you have singing cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) who gets tapped to appear in a serious picture, which for my money, could be a take off on B Western star Tim Holt, who made dozens of pictures in the Forties and proved a very credible actor in the Orson Welles picture, "The Magnificent Ambersons". And who wouldn't make the connection between Carlotta Valdez (Veronica Osorio) and that former Brazilian Bombshell, Carmen Miranda, who came to prominence as The Chiquita Banana Girl?
So the Coen Brothers take all these disparate film genres and weave a story involving a pregnant movie star (Scarlett Johansson) in a Busby Berkeley styled musical interlude, a B Western crooner who takes it upon himself to solve the kidnapping of Capitol Films' major star (George Clooney) from a Communist kidnapping, and an inspired tribute to Hollywood musicals featuring Channing Tatum as dancing sailor Burt Gurney. You couldn't miss that Gene Kelly connection if you tried, unless of course you're too young to pick up on the reference. Which is kind of a shame, because that's what goes a long way toward getting a ton of enjoyment from this picture.
So bottom line, this may not be a movie for everyone, because the spoofs go back some seventy years or so, and without the experience of all those old time stars and glorious black and white films of the past, the story might leave you scratching your head. No doubt this was a Coen Brothers labor of love, so for that one ought to be grateful, as I've never seen a Coen Brothers film I didn't like. Some better than others of course, and this one might be in the middle regarding their total output, but still, I could watch it any day of the week and be highly entertained.