Oy, Caesar...

Rating: 6/10 (7 February 2017)

"Hail, Caesar!" was one of the most anticipated movies of 2016 and one of the earliest releases. Being the last Coen brothers' movie made it an event by itself and probably one of the first expected Oscar contenders. Well, are you surprised that it only got a (lousy) Production Design nomination? I am not. Because... let's not kid ourselves; we all know the movie that marked the beginning of 2016 was "Deadpool". Sure it is less artsy and subtle than the more gourmet offering of the Coens but the film had the merit to feature a consistent plot, hilarious gags and without trying to be too smart, showcased a level of hip wit and self-deriding fun that "Heal Seizure!" failed to deliver. And I'm the first to deplore it.
I know these two movies are as close one another as Meryl Streep to a Michael Bay's script, but they have one thing in common that justify the comparison, they're meant to be fun and they rely on parody. The parody is the key because it works on a material we're all familiar with but then distorts it in order to produce gags based on unpredictability. The trick is to not to rely too much on the spoofed material because not every audience would get the references or because the film serves the references, not the opposite. I'm more familiar with Hollywood history than comic-books heroes, yet I enjoyed "Deadpool" more than "Give'em Hell, Caesar!", I know it has everything a movie lover should love, it is a love letter to Hollywood, not without that ounce of wicked wit the Coen brothers made a specialty of. This is a film I wanted to embrace with my arms wide open, I love the brothers' movies and a film about Hollywood is the kind of offer I couldn't refuse. But this is 2016, we had "Moulin Rouge!", "Chicago" and "The Artist", then "Argo" and "Birdman", movies about old-school Hollywood have flourished like cactus in the desert. I even started to reconsider my love for these films because of the way they started a tiresome trend but again, this is a Coens' movie so it's always new even by the standards they create. I saw the film once, I had to see it twice, and then even a third time.
Indeed, if it came from any other director, I would have thrown it already in the trashcan of my contempt but the Coens always get the benefit of the doubt. So how does "Hell or High Caesar!" hold up after the third viewing? Well, maybe better than at the first but that's not saying much. The premise is simply brilliant, having a Hollywood office worker whose specialty is to fix things (he's not called a fixer for nothing), and played by the always convincing Josh Brolin made me feel like I was going to penetrate an atmospheric neo-noir masterpiece like "The Man Who Wasn't There". Then the movie cuts to the titular film-within-the-film, a Tale of the Christ where George Clooney, playing a washed-up version of Robert Taylor in "Quo Vadis", is kidnapped.
But by the time we get the identity of the kidnappers, and their political inclinations, the film features a collection of old-school Hollywood pastiches with an Esther-Williams actress played by Scarlett Johannsen in a Ziegfeld Follies act, a Western B-movie actor who's probably a reference to... some B-movie actor and a few other musical numbers. To get things straight, they're all well done, but they don't add anything to the plot except for just being well done, they drag on for so long I suspected they were used as time fillers. Some parts were hilarious though, I loved the scene with Fiennes as a Polish director or where Eddie Mannix talk with the religious representatives and they go into a debate about God. God, that was pure Coen brothers' genius.
But despite the obvious effort to cover all the elements that made the history of Hollywood in the 50's, the Hayes codes, stars' depraved lifestyles, the Red Scare, "Excelsior" might be just a tad too sophisticated for its own good. It is probably an intelligent movie in its stylish complexity but it commits a rather silly move by predicting our instant praise on the simple basis that it's about movies. Well, the stunt seemed to have worked with critics as the film but it didn't show with the audience and many viewers dismissed it as the worst Coen brothers' film. Would I? Well, forgetting the premise and some hilarious parts, it is probably the worst in the sense that it simply used Hollywood as a vehicle for gags, but they never made you feel you that it was going somewhere, "meh" was my most frequently obtained reaction.
I felt some strong Woody Allen vibes from it, from the stellar cast (also including Channing Tatum, Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill or Tilda Swinton as the two gossip columnists, twin sisters embodying the Hedda Hopper/ Louella Parsons rivalry) the film might have worked better had it played like Woody Allen's masterpiece "Radio Days". The film could have been a "Hollywood Days" with many little vignettes and that would have forced the Coens to push the concept a little higher, to make each one as enjoyable and entertaining as the whole of the film. Or maybe they should have just tried to forget about the whole homage thing because the film was never as funny as when it took departure from its Hollywood shtick.
Now, to end on a positive note, if you love Hollywood and appreciate a good love letter with all the archetypes that forged Hollywood legend, just watch the magnificent five-minute dream sequence of "The Ballad of the Daltons". As for this film, well you might give Caesar what is Caesar's, but there's not much to give.