Oh, the humanity!

Rating: 6/10 (1 August 2016)

The Coen Brothers have given us some wonderful black comedies and dramas -- among them, some of my favorites: No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, the Hudsucker Proxy,etc. I was so excited to see them tackling old Hollywood again as they did in Barton Fink.
What a letdown.
The story is a day in the life of Eddie Mannix. Eddie Mannix was a real person, Louis B. Mayer's "fixer". He has been played in the past by Bob Hoskins and Barney Martin. His wife, Toni, was the girlfriend of George "Superman" Reeves until he broke it off.
Unfortunately, a day in the life of Eddie Mannix is episodic, with problems solved off-screen. Some of it is amusing. With the exception of a 30-second scene with Frances McDormand, none of it is laugh out loud funny. It's a shame because there were some fine performances from Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Alden Ehrenreich, and Tilda Swinton.
The old Hollywood is beautifully replicated. We have a Spartacus- type, w film going on, starring Baird Whitlock (George Clooney, who looks dreadful) who is kidnapped by Communists and held for ransom. Johansson is an Esther Williams type, and we see women doing a water ballet while the character rises from the water in what looks like a big champagne glass. Instead of a huge smile and extending her arms a la Esther, she looks very tentative.
There's a Gene Kelly-Sinatra type film about sailors that has a cute musical number by Channing Tatum, whom I guess is supposed to be a gay Communist; and finally, a period piece that a western star (Alden Ehrenreich) is thrust into, walking bowlegged and talking with a twang. Fiennes is the director, Laurence Laurentz, who attempts to coach him. Tilda Swinton plays columnist sisters, fighting for exclusives.
So fixer Eddie has to get Baird Whitlock back, fix Johansson's problem, calm Fiennes - it's a major drag. It would have been better to concentrate on the film Hail, Caesar and take out the stupid Communist plot.
This film had so much potential, but it goes NOWHERE. And by the way, it contains an old wives' tale - someone says that Mannix saved a major star involved in a hit and run by hushing it up, and the person he hit did six months in prison for him. That's supposed to be Clark Gable, and the story is dead wrong. If you want the real story, go to snopes.com - it's a fascinating dissection going back to the original article, which states that Clark Gable rammed his car into a tree on Howard Strickling's law.
How the story evolved is actually more fun than this movie.