Disappointed.

Rating: 2/10 (5 March 2016)

The first thing to point out is that Hail, Caesar! does not grab you by the nuts and hold you there; it comes across as completely bipolar. I didn't hold out too many high expectations (I don't think) as despite hearing that it was "the best comedy of the year", I hadn't actually seen a trailer of it and just went out on a whim to go watch it.
The film itself just feels jittery and all over the place. It feels like there is no clear plot; it's 13% actual narrative and 87% filler. It comes across as though someone had this cool idea for a film, but then realised that it needed padding out for it to be feature-length. It continuously cut from the main plot of the film to show snippets from films that the studio was creating - this didn't really add anything to the story development other than showing the audience that it was a working, functioning film studio. I personally found that it detracted from the film because of the pure amount of them and the random/sporadic placement of them became disorienting - it made it difficult to follow what should have been a clear and concise narrative.
Personally, I felt as though I never saw any real form of character development nor experienced any connection with a character on screen as it felt like they had to fight just to get a couple of minutes worth of screen time. I honestly think this would have went down better if they cut out all of the unnecessary characters because that way, it would be more streamlined and less for the viewer to keep track of; plus, if only those characters that aided the development would have been featured, it would have cut down on the confusion as to who is who.
The film garnered no laughs in the auditorium, except for a stifled snigger here and there. The only thing that did make me chuckle was when I heard a grown man behind me go "Ooh, Mr Channing Tatum!" as he came on screen in his slightly tight sailors outfit. I was in the mood as to where I really wanted to laugh and enjoy the film; I was on the edge of my seat just waiting for the punchline, something to come out of the blue and just slap me silly, but unfortunately, that never happened. To me, it felt like one of the films that tried to be edgy and cool, but failed miserably. It felt like the writers and actors bounced off one another, where they had so much fun and created so many beautiful memories whilst creating this film that it gave them this weird sort of comical sentiment towards it to the point where they must have thought it was hilarious watching it back in the editing room, but the thing with that is, the audience doesn't hold these sentiments or values - an inside joke, if you will.
To conclude, I feel like the only way to enjoy this film is to take a rather large handful of narcotics before viewing. Actually, I guess you could say it was that best comedy of the year - it was so bad that it was almost laughable.