A complete and utter mess

Rating: 3/10 (13 March 2016)

As much as I love the Coen brothers, they've truly messed up what could have been a promising film in Hail, Caesar. I think the Coens are trying to be too clever for their own good and in this instance, it has well and truly backfired. One of the missing ingredients is the Coen brothers' trademark absurd sense of humour e.g. The Big Lebowski, O brother where art thou, Raising Arizona just to name some of their most hysterically foot stomping funny films.
There were simply too many elements and sub stories in Hail, Caesar that ultimately led nowhere. How would one draw the threads linking a studio executive (Josh Brolin) looking for a missing leading man (George Clooney) who was kidnapped by a group of communist writers, whose mysterious leader also happens to be a campy, tap dancing sailor and a premadonna-ish Hollywood actress (Scarlet Johanssen) trying to offload her child so she can re-adopt it? And that's just the main story line. There are other sub plots that are much too confusing or pointless to introduce in this review. Suffice it to say that this turned out to be a complete mess of a film.
For filmmakers as talented as the Coen brothers this is a real disappointment.