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| George Clooney |
"This is bad for movie stars everywhere," says one movie star after another is kidnapped in the new Coen Bros' new mystery comedy, "Hail, Caesar!" The opposite may be true for appearing in a Coen Bros' movie, even one that won't rank as their best. Part mystery and part homage to old Hollywood filmmaking, the uneven but fun comedy works far better as the latter, featuring a gallery of contemporary stars, the highlight of which is a homoerotic song-and-dance routine from Channing Tatum. The movie follows a day in the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a Hollywood fixer for Capital Pictures in the 1950s, who cleans up and solves problems for big names and stars in the industry. But when studio star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) disappears, Mannix has to deal with more than just the fix. Directed, written, produced and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen, the modestly enjoyable "Hail, Caesar!" is best when it pokes fun at Old Hollywood, with great turns by Brolin (whose character is more studio head than low-level "fixer," just saying), a scene-stealing (as always) Tilda Swinton as twin-Hollywood Gossip-columnist sisters and newcomer Alden Ehrenreich ("Beautiful Creatures") as a seemingly dim cowboy star who's thrust into some major drama on and off-screen - and also has one of the film's funniest scenes with Ralph Fiennes as his long-suffering director working on a particular line of dialogue. Some of "Caesar" works better than others, interestingly the kidnapping angle with Clooney is the movie's biggest weakness, a muddled aspect of the movie lacking the same quick flow the studio scenes have, and the ending in particular is disappointing. If it weren't for Ehreneich and Swinton, Tatum, in a small part, would walk - or dance - off with the movie - in one of the movie's memorable and glamorous Old Hollywood movie-in-a-movie sequences. Tatum's scene pays tribute (somewhat) to Gene Kelly, while it also has fun with big-budget 1950s Biblical epics, loopy Westerns and a particularly elaborate Esther Williams-style sequence with Scarlett Johansson. On the downside, the Coen's have packed in too many unnecessary characters to provide small parts to some big-name actors: Johansson and Fiennes have minimal impact, while Jonah Hill and Joel Coen's wife, Oscar-winner Frances McDormand, are seen only very briefly in cameos, in spite of what the posters and trailers might have you believe. "Hail, Caesar!" isn't the Coen's best and the last act in particular is a little off, but there's enough inspiring moments to still check it out, and after maybe re-watch one of their classics like "Fargo" or "Raising Arizona."
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