Hail Storm Warning

Rating: 2/10 (12 April 2016)

Man, it's been two days since I've seen this, and thank God, it's fading fast.
What a waste. Oh, those Coen BrosHIT and SO MUCH MISS is their career. When they're on, i.e. No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski or Fargo, they're priceless. When they miss, like O Brother, Where Art Thou, A Serious Man or this Hail, Caesar!, they crash and burn.
In their defense, O Brother and Serious Man weren't terrible, just not their best work. This one is just dreadful. I get everything they were telling me. I could follow the "stories." And I know most of this, if not all of it, was true from what happened back in the days before TV took off. They just failed to make it interesting.
For the most part, it was an incredible chore to get through. Just a series of scenes spliced together. Some coherent, some wacky (Coens Brand,) some boring. Many subplots wrapped around a man doing his job and questioning his fit there.
Problem is, actually there were many, but the main one was that none of the 40 or so plots were interesting. Great, we get to see a greatest hits collection of the Coen's usual suspects, some in heavy makeup albeit still recognizable, some in photoshopped glamour. While it was somewhat interesting to say, "Oh! There's Frances McDormand!" I just saw them there more for friendship than the script.
On the surface, it was just showing the tyrant leadership and behind the scenes of cinema back in the 50s. But dig deeper and you'll rupture a sewage pipe andthat wasn't a discovery I wanted or expected from the Coens.
***
Final thoughts: Man, I used to be the biggest George Clooney fan. For a decade or so following his Rock Bottom Batman, he just kept getting progressively better. ThenTomorrowland. Thenthis. Uh, we need you back to your fantastic Michael Clayton, Ocean's Eleven and Up in the Air days. Please come back to us, Clooney. These recent choices make you almost look like you wanna go (back) to the E.R. for brain surgery.