Excellent Production Design can't save Coen Brother's weak satire on early 50s Hollywood studio system

Rating: 5/10 (7 August 2016)

For those who have read my reviews, you can see I am not a big fan of the Coen Brothers. Yes, their production design is usually impeccable and for the most part they manage to cull fairly respectable performances from their actors. But they inevitably fall down in the area of screen writing and "Hail, Caesar!," their most recent take on the early 50s Hollywood heyday and Biblical epics, is no exception.
Hail, Caesar! is pretty much a one-joke idea. The main plot revolves around the protagonist, Eddie Mannix, based on a real character of the same name, solidly played by Josh Brolin. Mannix is a "fixer" for the fictional Capitol Pictures, charged with ensuring everything runs smoothly on the studio lot.
When Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), star of the studio's main production, Hail, Caesar! (a poor man's "Ben Hur"), is kidnapped, Mannix meets a ransom demand of $100,000 by requesting "petty cash" from the accounting department. We soon find out that Whitlock has been kidnapped by a group of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters who are depicted as a Communist cell.
Unlike Trumbo, a recent biographical film about the noted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo which depicted blacklisted screenwriters as victims of a Congressional witch hunt, here the Coens throw political correctness to the wind and present the screenwriters not only as a traitorous bunch but also as a coterie of bumbling fools. Ironically, according to Ronald Radosh, in his article "Will the New Trumbo Movie Rehash Old Myths?", Trumbo stated late in his career that his "fellow Red screenwriters failed to get work not because they were Reds, but because they were "mediocrities." The Coens appear to echo Trumbo's sentiments.
There's some mildly amusing stuff here when Whitlock is depicted as being charmed by the screenwriters, who have fallen under the spell of a crotchety old professor who spouts the party line. And later on, after Whitlock is rescued, Mannix slaps some "sense" into him for allowing himself to be seduced by the "dreaded" Communist writers. The climactic "crisis" scene at the end of the second act also highlights the group's ineptitude, when one of the studio's actors, intending to defect, boards a Russian submarine, but accidentally drops the bag containing the ransom into the ocean, after his dog jumps into his arms. But the scene with the writers goes on for much too long and the jokes (elucidated above) tend to get lost in all the excessive verbiage.
Another example of a joke that goes on for too long involves the sub-plot featuring the studio's Cowboy star, Hobie Doyle. Alden Ehrenreich is actually quite good in the role of a country crooner who's ordered by the studio to act in a period drama directed by the classically trained Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes). Laurentz attempts to have Doyle speak in a highly refined accent but after many takes, Doyle cannot escape from his ingrained Country-Western twang. The problem here are the many "takes" that the Coens believe are hilarious but in reality become tiresome.
The rest of the narrative in part features the Coens' satirizing some of the big Hollywood musical production numbers. Scarlett Johansson briefly shows up as DeeAnna Moran, an Esther Williams-like synchronized swimmer beset with an out of wedlock situation which Mannix must come in and "fix." This allows Jonah Hill to step forward in a brief cameo as an accountant who protects Moran's reputation by ultimately marrying her.
Tatum Channing also does nicely as Burt Gurney, a Gene Kelly-like sailor, dancing up a storm in the Coens' homage to big movie musicals like "On the Town." Gurney is later revealed as the actor who defects to the Russians.
Also of note is Tilda Swinton, playing identical twin gossip columnists based on the rivalry between Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. Frances McDormand also gets in the act as a chain-smoking film editor, who is almost strangled by an errant roll of celluloid that gets accidentally wrapped around her neck while frantically doing her job.
In the end, the Coens' main plot simply is not clever or developed enough to sustain an entire feature. Instead, the sub-plots end up being more interesting to look at due to some more dynamic visual elements. Count on the Coens to deliver when it comes to production design—but only count on a few intermittent chuckles here and there, when it comes to the dialogue and story line.