Joel and Ethan Coen are two of the biggest names when it comes to good reliable movies. Most people have a favorite movie of theirs with the exception of Michael Bay fans and the kind of people who find NCIS riveting. They make the kind of movies that you can bet money on, or at least bet the ten dollars for a ticket. But no matter how great they are, they’re not infallible and Hail, Caesar! is a testament to that. Hail, Caesar! was probably the best boring movie I’ve ever seen. Let me explain in my review.
I laughed. I really did. And not the kind of laughing that reeks of ridicule. The kind of laugh hipsters do at big budget movies . They were honest laughs. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but I just didn’t like it. I had fun watching it but it was so riddled with problems that unless a friend asks me to go, I will probably never see it again. Hail, Caesar! felt fragmented. So much so that it would have been a better experience if they had broken it and rearranged it into three or four short stories with one over arching story to connect them. The endings to the side stories didn’t feel satisfying and even the ending to the main story felt lackluster. I just didn’t care. The Coens tried to do so much that I didn’t get pulled in to any one story. There was even a reoccurring joke and when the secret was revealed it was so stupid that I felt cheated.
I really wanted to love this movie. The Coen brothers are responsible for some of my favorite films to rewatch over and over.. Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and of course O Brother, Where Art Though? all get pulled off my shelf and popped into my player a couple times a year. Hail, Caesar! was a mediocre movie that could and should have been good. Yay for rhyming. The side stories should have been fleshed out more or done away with entirely. The main plot should have had more depth to it and not felt like a beginning imporv class’s attempt at a funny sketch.
The acting was good but the only people who could really be appreciated were Josh Brolin, George Clooney, and Alden Ehrenreich (Beautiful Creatures). All the trailers I saw talked up all the actors who were in it but some of them, like Jonah Hill and Scarlett Johansson were barely even worth a mention. I’m not saying that big actors should only do big roles. But if your previews are going drop names like bills in a strip club then they should have something worth the name drop. If the other actors names had been kept out of the limelight and their fame saved for a big screen surprise, then it would have made the movie that much more enjoyable. I was eagerly waiting for Jonah Hill’s part in the movie and one short scene later his character was tossed away like a travel sized toothpaste (Metaphorically of course, no plot spoilers here.).
There was a really good scene between Ralph Fiennes and Alden Ehrenreich but the problem was that it felt like was part of a totally different movie. It was a funny scene that was well acted, well written, and well directed but it felt out of place. I would rather have seen that scene taken out entirely while keeping Hobbie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich’s character) in the film and instead extend the scene a bit and release it as a short. Another great scene was Channing Tatum’s song and dance number that served as a pleasant distraction from a boring movie.
Random thought. There was this episode of the 90’s Nicktoon Rocko’s Modern Life where we learned that Ed and Bev Bighead’s son Ralph was a famous animator who worked on a show called The Fatheads. Later on in the episode Ralph wants to get fired so he enlists the help of Rocko and Heffer. They start adding random shit into episodes of The Fatheads but it backfires and people love it. That’s what parts of Hail, Caesar! felt like. The two scenes I talked about in the previous paragraph felt so foreign that it was almost jarring, but I loved those scenes more than any of the others.
It’s going to sound like I’m about to contradict myself, but stay with me. If you’re a fan of the Coen brothers then make sure you watch Hail, Caesar!. I know I shat on this movie a lot but it was enjoyable even though it wasn’t good. The few scattered beautiful scenes saved the movie from being a true travesty but it wasn’t enough to bump up the final grade. I got in for matinee prices and I still wish I waited for one of the streaming services to get it. Hail, Caesar! had the familiar humor of the Coen brothers but didn’t pull me in like most of their movies do. Be warned before you drop money on this film.
Hail, Caesar! gets a 5 out of 11