Golden Hollywood Retriver

Rating: 4/10 (3 April 2016)

Hail Caesar! is a screwball comedy and satire of late 1940s and early 1950s Hollywood. An era when writers were reds under the beds, stars had scandalous skeletons in the closet and both actors and actresses had to perform on the casting couch to get parts. Studio bosses had to hire fixers to make problems go away. Hollywood executive Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) who in between trying to give up smoking and going to confession is a fixer.
Film star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) disappears because he gets drugged and kidnapped by a group of communists and held for ransom but Whitlock at least engages in philosophical left wing banter with his erudite captors. Mannix needs to locate him fast and get the film finished.
Mannix also has to deal with a cowboy actor who is good at stunts but no good at speaking lines especially as he is engaged to make a drama. There is starlet (Scarlett Johansson) who might be pregnant outside of wedlock which could lead to a big scandal.
The Coen brothers take a scatter gun approach, it is almost free- wheeling in places with star cameos. Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is a director trying to get Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) to speak his lines correctly. Thora and Thessaly Tacker (Tilda Swinton in dual roles) are rival gossip columnists trying out-scoop each other.
Somewhere in the film there are some good set pieces, the best of which is an outstanding dance routine from Channing Tatum, playing a Gene Kelly like actor and he really dances to the style of Kelly which is no mean feat.
The film is too messy and too lightweight despite a heavyweight cast. The disjointed nature was irritating which tried to disguise a thin plot and some of the humour was as old as the biblical epic that the production company was trying to make.