Definitely a Coen brothers picture...

Rating: 5/10 (3 February 2016)

There are people who love the Coen Brothers, people who hate them and people, like me, who are ambivalent. For a frame of reference, I enjoyed Hudsucker Proxy and Oh Brother Where Art Thou, but couldn't get into Big Lebowski, and could take or leave Fargo, and No Country for old men and True Grit left me a bit flat. So now that a baseline is established...
Like many of the Coen brothers movies, this featured characters who were over the top to the point of being caricatures. The cinematography was superb and the dialog was clever and delivered well. I have to say the actors did tremendous jobs with their over the top characters. I also enjoyed the sense of nostalgia, for the seedy tabloid days of Hollywood, where the studios control the image of the actors as much as they control what happens on the screen.
The problem I had with the movie was that it was a collection of amusing scenes that didn't pile together to create a good movie. They spent so much time making fun of everything (religion, actors, directors, etc) that the satire wore thin and became stilted. At times the caricatures also devolved into stereotyping.
I wouldn't recommend this to people, but I wouldn't say it's a total waste. I know there were Coen brother fans in the theater for the sneak preview who seemed excited to talk about the movie after (mostly with comments about mainstream movie goers), so there are definitely people who this would appeal to. But for me, I thought there was enough good stuff to merit an above average rating, but that's it.