Friends, Romans, Movie Fans, lend me your ears, for I would like to "Hail, Caesar!"

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2016)

When we go to the movies, we want to feel that we got our money's worth, right? Well, here's a film that gives us more for our money than most films. For the price of admission to this one movie: "Hail, Caesar!" (PG-13, 1:46), we get two directors and two screenwriters (brothers Joel and Ethan Cohen), three Oscar winners (George Clooney, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton) and three previous Oscar nominees (Josh Brolin, Ralph Fiennes and Jonah Hill), the third appearance by Josh Brolin in a Coen Brother's film, Clooney's fourth such gig, the fifth movie in which Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill have both appeared – and five films within a film! We also get three satires for the price of one as this movie gently parodies (but does not pillory) religion, Hollywood's communist witch hunt of the 1950s and the Golden Age of Hollywood itself. Actually, the film's content seems to me like a comedic version of the Oscar-nominated 2015 film "Trumbo". There's a lot going on in "Hail, Caesar!" Of course, the most important question now is, whether all this quantity equals quality.
Brolin stars as a loose interpretation of Eddie Mannix, a real-life Hollywood "fixer" in the 40s and 50s. During this one day in his life working as an executive for the fictional movie studio Capitol Pictures, Eddie has a lot to deal with, both professionally and personally. In his personal life, he's feeling guilty about his failed attempts to quit smoking and the lies he tells his wife about it (not to mention the toll that his long hours at the studio are taking on his family life) and he's weighing a lucrative job offer to leave Hollywood behind and help run Lockheed Aviation. On the studio lot, Eddie has to deal with a weather-delayed shoot at a remote location and a producer who needs a new male star for his current production (and a director who's not happy with Eddie's choice). Eddie's also consulting a disparate group of religious leaders on the historical and theological validity of the studio's current biblical epic, and handling an unmarried star who just started filming a new movie and is pregnant, twin sisters who are competing entertainment journalists (Swinton in both roles), a slew of celebrity-oriented rumors and, most troubling of all, the sudden and mysterious disappearance of that epic's star, Baird Whitlock.
Baird (Clooney) has been kidnapped. He was just a couple scenes away from completing his role as a Roman military commander in the aforementioned biblical epic, entitled "Hail, Caesar!" – and is still dressed in his full ancient Roman regalia when he's taken. Baird is a well-known drunk and womanizer, but that doesn't help Eddie figure out where he is or when he'll be back. Then, a ransom note arrives at the studio. The note asks for $100,000 and is signed by a group calling themselves "The Future". (No, this isn't a time travel movie.) Baird's captors are actually a relatively peaceful group of people who treat him fairly well. Of course, Baird's current condition is unknown to Eddie and doesn't solve the problem of a major production falling behind schedule. Also in on the secret of Baird's disappearance is Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrereich), another of his studio's stars. Despite suddenly being pulled from filming a western to act in a period drama for director Laurence Laurentz (Fiennes) – and being comically bad in a serious role (and not the brightest bulb in the socket), Hobie wants to help the studio any way he can. In the midst of all this, we get to see humorous scenes in which Johannson and Tatum are each filming their respective movies and Hill gets a short, but amusing scene as an office nerd who helps fixers.
"Hail, Caesar!" is definitely a Coen Brothers movie. More than an obvious statement of fact, that sentence will likely carry a lot of meaning to many Movie Fans. This film is full of quirky characters, clever dialog, smart satire, catchy original songs and excellent actors who are Coen Brothers regulars (including Joel's wife, Frances McDormand, in a small role). All that, combined with the fun "movie within a movie" scenes, make for one entertaining motion picture. I liked this movie very much, but I wanted to like it more than I did. As with most other Coen Brothers comedies, I would've appreciated a few more laughs and a somewhat tighter plot, but I still think that this film is one of their best. "A-"