An Enjoyable Mess

Rating: 7/10 (8 March 2016)

The main plot of the movie reads as a day-in-the-life story of Eddie Mannix, head producer of Capitol Studios, as he has to deal with kidnapped actors, potential PR disasters, and unhappy arrangements. However the plot gets muddled when it decides to make a big deal of every sub- plot. Of course the biggest and most peculiar is the abduction of Baird Whitlock by a group of communist screenwriters. It holds the most meat of the movie, and yet doesn't feature into the day-in-the-life approach of Eddie Mannix. He's just simply not that bothered by it; "Give him a day, he'll turn up" Instead his side of the movie is padded out with the other sub-plots. Hobie Doyle is plucked from his lineless Westerns and assigned to a dialogue-driven period drama, DeeAnna Moran is dealing with a husband-less pregnancy that would look bad for the movie and the studio, and Thora and Thessaly Thacker compete for the latest exclusive in movie gossip. Mannix is the guy who ties these all together as he attempts to resolve them all (finding that, in the end, they all kind of solve themselves anyway).
As with all of the Coen's movies, Hail, Caesar! does attempt some deeper meaning, although again like all of the Coen's movies, what exactly it's trying to say is buried deep beneath the bizarre and humorous story. It's most obvious angle, and also the principle supply of laughs, is the satire of the movie industry, particularly that of the 50s. It's riddled with movies-within- movies that riff on iconic stereotypes of Hollywood at that time; Westerns with silent protagonists, musicals with tap-dance scenes, religious epics with bombastic speeches, et al.
Below that though is another theme, but if I'm honest, I'm not exactly set on what specifically the theme focuses on. On one hand it's about belief, as Eddie Mannix truly believes in the movies he's making, and that they matter, that the Thacker twins' audience will believe every bit of gossip they type up, Baird Whitlock succumbing to communist beliefs without too much of a struggle etc. On the other hand, this could all be seen as a riff on loyalty and authority; Mannix being loyal to his movies, his directors, his actors etc, Thacker twins being loyal to their audience in supplying them the gossip they desire, Hobie's loyalty to Mannix in tracking down the whereabouts of Baird etc. In truth it all comes off as unfocused. It definitely wants to say something, but the approach it takes muddles up the message on the way out.
Comedy-wise, Hail, Caesar! isn't the Coen's funniest, but it doesn't completely flunk either. There were a number of jokes throughout the film that I did chuckle at, most notably the discussion amongst four religious figureheads is not only the film's high point, but also it's most amusing. They were so few and far between though that I can barely remember most of them, which isn't exactly promising.
Acting was on top form from everyone. Josh Brolin's Mannix is a hard edge who's perpetually worried about doing the right thing and making the right choice. George Clooney's Whitlock is respectable and devoted to his job, but largely clueless to the real world around him. Alden Ehrenreich (who I found out today is the exact same age as me; born on the exact same day) was also pretty great as Hobie, who looks like a fish out of water on an indoors set, unable to speak his lines, and yet with a well-established idea of his place in the industry, doing as he's told, but smart enough to take his own initiative as well. Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Alison Pill, Clancy Brown, Wayne Knight, and Michael Gambon all make appearances of varying degrees, but none of which extensive enough to make any marked impression.
Visually the movie is unsurprisingly beautiful watch. Hail, Caesar? Hail, Roger Deakins more like. There isn't really a lot I can say as Deakins' cinematography has yet to disappoint. He always makes the imagery in any movie he touches pop and stick in your mind's eye. In Hail, Caesar! he uses the subtle theme of movie vs reality and plays it up by making sure all the movie within a movie scenes don't look out of place, even when they have a cinema screen or camera viewfinder border. There's a couple of "real world" scenes that are produced as if they're part of a movie within the movie as well which cements the visual goal of blurring reality.
As I said, the Coen brothers either make great movies or awful movies; movies that are tight and focused and know exactly what they want to be, or movies that meander around pointlessly with nothing particularly important to say. Hail, Caesar! falls in the latter category. It lacks focus, it's never quite sure what it wants to be or what it wants to say, and it's large cast and number of sub-plots just muddies the whole narrative, ensuring that no sub-plot and no character really gets the attention they deserve. It's not a complete Coenflunk though. It looks and sounds great, and it's revision of 50s Hollywood tropes and clichés is spot on. When it does take the time to be funny, it garners a few hearty laughs, and the running jokes are sublimely subtle in their delivery. With all that considered, I give Hail, Caesar! an enjoyable 7/10. It won't rock your world, but there are worse ways to waste an hour and a half.