Filmic Friday 223: Hail, Caesar!

I'm not a comedy person. I don't usually enjoy comedies. I enjoy me some absurdist humor, like Monty Python's Flying Circus, once in a while, and I grew up with Red Dwarf and Mr. Bean, but when it comes to American so-called comedy?

Nope.

I'm not a fan.

It's usually all gross sex jokes that border on bullying, often holding racist or sexist over/undertones. When it's not that, it's painfully bland physical comedy I've seen a million times. A nut shot is a nut shot. We've all seen it. We're over it. Or I am, at least.

And then there are the uncomfortable comedies where the goal of the comedy is to make you squirm. I hate that. I really, really hate it. I'm anxious enough, thanks.

But then there are movies like Hail, Caesar!...

A comedy I didn't hate.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not a huge Coens fan. I don't dislike them or their films, but I'm also not a devotee of their oeuvre. I am, however, a huge fan of movies that frankly discuss how messed up Hollywood was during the Red Scare, and Hail, Caesar! is alllllllll about that.

Well, technically it's about this guy.

We're introduced to our main character at confession with a priest who is... pretty done with all of this, already, really. Eddie Mannix, played by Josh Brolin, is a fixer who has to deal with all the petty squabbling on the Capitol Pictures lots among stars, directors, and even the press.

Ah, the stars... so glamorous.

Something is afoot on the set of the studio's religious epic Hail, Caesar! A Story of the Christ. The lead actor (played by George Clooney) has been kidnapped. Mannix is in charge of getting him back while putting out every other comparatively tiny fire on the lot.

Baird Whitlock (Clooney) has been taken by the disgruntled script-writers, who have all become Commies!

I loved how the writers are all clearly based off of the same writers I saw in Trumbo. Seriously, if you watched this back-to-back with Trumbo, you'd probably be able to figure out who was who! What fascinated me the most, however, was how easily Whitlock falls into the Communist discussion groups, despite being exactly what they despise and being a moron to boot. It's marvelous comedy!

Now, while Baird is hanging out with a bunch of Commies, Eddie Mannix is hard at work trying to find him, and also trying to get one of the biggest Western stars, Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), to play nice with Director Lawrence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) on a drama set, since their first choice for lead fell through. This is also pure comedy, and it breaks my heart that Solo: A Star Wars Story didn't get too much love, because Ehrenreich is amazing in this role, and I worry that the failed sci-fi prequel will damage his burgeoning career.

Seriously - the man is perfect in this role!

Hobie is a simple man. He rides his horse, he shoots his guns, he sings his songs. Yeah. He's a cross between Gene Autry and Clayton Moore. He does all of his own stunts, since he was discovered at a rodeo doing all the flips and fancy lariat work that he uses in his movies. He's possibly the worst possible choice to be placed in a drama based off of a Broadway hit...

But Ehrenreich's acting is what really steals the show. Everyone else in this movie is playing it up for laughs. Brolin's Mannix is a more-active John Jonah Jameson, complete with gruff words and jerking head motions. Clooney's Whitlock is a buffoon. Scarlett Johansson's DeeAnna Moran is a sex-crazed starlet through-and-through. Ralph Fiennes is a parody of every self-important director ever. Christoph Lambert's Seslum is a doofy but well-meaning director who may have an issue with sleeping with his stars. Channing Tatum's Burt Gurney is a parody of song-and-dance men from musical films to the point of pain (though it still works).

But Hobie Doyle is real.

He's earnest. He cares about the studio. He cares about his work. He really wants to do his best and help the shows be the best they can.

Which is why his disappearance in the end, after "rescuing" Whitlock from the Communists is so painful. He even has an abandoned romance subplot (which is literally just a publicity stunt from the studio, but still) with the studio's "exotic" dancer (think more like Chita Rivera than Mata Hari...). Their dinner is adorable, but it's interrupted by the plot, and I could've used a few more scenes with both of them...

Speaking of subplots...

Scarlett Johansson is a victim of the subplot hell that this movie sometimes devolves into. As the originator of yet another fire that Eddie has to put out, DeeAnna Moran (Johansson) has gotten pregnant and is (reasonably) certain that Director Arne Seslum (Lambert) is the father. At first, Eddie tries to go to Seslum to get him to marry Moran, but it turns out that Seslum is already married in Sweden, and while Hollywood was still pretty liberal even back then, it wasn't bigamy liberal. A new plan was put into place - Moran will adopt her own baby using Jonah Hill's heretofor (and it's 3/4 of the way through the movie) undiscussed and unseen character, Joe Silverman, as an intermediary.

And the situation resolves itself.

There's a little banter between Silverman and Moran, but the relationship apparently progresses offscreen and the two elope. Problem solved. Pointless diversion.

But let's move on to our "villains" for this film!

First, we have Tilda Swinton as identical twins Thora and Thessaly Thacker, gossip mongers/Hollywood journalists on the hunt for stories about Baird Whitlock. These characters break up most of the good scenes and get in the way, but I can forgive this because that's kinda what Hollywood is like - you're having a nice night out with a pretty dancer and some harpy descends on you to sniff out a story.

But Swinton isn't the issue. Neither Thora nor Thessaly have taken Baird Whitlock and imprisoned him with Communists. No, that would be Thora's "secret source" of information: Burt Gurney.

Musical Theater/film star Burt Gurney. Communist spy.

Our first introduction to Burt Gurney is via a very homoerotic musical number where a bunch of soldiers are apparently quite torn regarding how they feel about six months without any women around... it's intensely homoerotic, but comedically so, much like most musical theater, in my experience. Regardless, Burt isn't the All-American Boy he presents himself to be, as it turns out that he's the mastermind behind the Communist cell that has kidnapped Baird Whitlock. He's trying to defect to the USSR, and here's where we dip from potentially wasted storyline to absolutely criminal waste.

The captain of the submarine he defects on is apparently played by Dolph Lundgren.

And they cut his part!

How do you cut Dolph Lundgren?! How do you miss out on the comedy goldmine that is one of the smartest men in Hollywood in a Communist sub off the coast of Hollywood?!

But Hobie rescues Whitlock from Gurney's mansion (where he has been held the whole film) and takes him back to Mannix, who backhands him into submission before they finish Hail, Caesar! and everyone lives happily ever after.

Except for the writers, who are all being tried for treason.

Oops.

Because there's so much Thacker interruption and so little time spent with Hobie and Dolph got cut and the script is kind of a mess, I have to agree with IMDB - this is a three-star film out of five.

It's really funny, I love that there's voiceover narration with Michael Gambon, and it's exquisitely shot and lit and scored, but there's so much editing that probably should have happened, and we don't get to spend time with enough people for long enough. Especially Hobie! Give me a Hobie movie!

Hail, Caesar! probably would have fared better as a miniseries, in my opinion. I feel like it would be even funnier with room to breathe!

That'll about do it for me for today!

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