Hail, Caesar! Boo, Octavian (or something)

Rating: 8/10 (21 April 2020)

Having rewatched this movie, I came to the inescapable conclusion that this is my least-favorite Coen brothers movie (out of 11 watched, soon to be12 once I get around to watching A Serious Man.) Which is absurd, given that I still rate it an 8. The Coen's are masters of their craft.
The humor and situations are broad enough that a viewer can pick up on the general references and semi-inside jokes fairly easily with a passing knowledge of Golden Age Hollywood, but much of it still feels like a love note to other film enthusiasts and cinephiles from the Coen brothers, which made it feel a little inaccessible at times, as though we were supposed to find certain aspects hilarious but, without the grounding, we could only muster an awkward chuckle. The extended song-and-dance with the sailors, for instance, seemed too long and elaborate to justify the apparent punchline at the end, so I was left scratching my head, wondering if there was more to it, or if the Coens just wanted to a long musical number for its own sake. Granted, the Coens do riff on lots of genres and cultural eras over the course of their filmography, so this movie neither surprising nor out-of-character. Nevertheless, it felt more like a straight-up comedy of errors that relied on an intimate understanding of the era to bridge the gaps rather than a particularly cohesive narrative set in the period, with big-name stars relegated to what amounted basically to cameos with promises of plotlines that never really stuck.
But, dammit, it's still a Coen brothers movie, and better than 90% of the movies out there.