Hail, Caesar! [DVD]

We watched this one on the small screen, via Amazon, so we didn’t get the full effect of the big production numbers—one of them, an Esther Williams–style “water ballet,” clearly descended from the bowling-Valkyrie dream sequence in “Lebowksi.” My wife tuned out pretty quickly; I found it intriguing but not very involving; the jokes are the kind that might make you say to yourself “That’s cute” or “That’s kind of funny,” rather than LOL… “Hail, Caesar”’s comparable to “Inside Llewyn Davis,” IMHO, in that the main character’s basically opaque and not very sympathetic, and practically everyone else is a cartoon or a grotesque of some kind. The brothers’ trademark cold-eyed detachment isn’t really working for them here, in other words.Nevertheless, Josh Brolin gets full marks for his performance as Eddie Mannix, old-school Hollywood fixer and hands-on production exec. Eddie’s to-do list provides the Coens with a perfunctory plot: a starlet’s caught posing for “French postcards,” the unmarried star of popular “aquatic pictures” inconveniently gets pregnant, the erratic lead in a Bible epic unexpectedly goes missing, the studio head insists on casting a singing cowboy in a foofy drawing-room comedy…Most of the film consists of skitlike set pieces tied together, as the Dude might say, by a couple of nutty disquisitions on philosophy and religion.There are some hits here, some misses—a cell of blacklisted writers explains Marxism to a susceptible movie star (George Clooney) (hit); Eddie consults a panel of squabbling clergymen to make sure the Bible epic’s “visual depiction of the Godhead” won’t offend ticket buyers (miss).I didn’t get the sense that the Coens were seriously trying to engage with any of these Big Ideas, as they did so brilliantly in “A Serious Man.” I wasn’t sure what to make of Eddie’s obsessive Catholicism (“Father, it’s been 27 hours since my last confession”) or the dimwitted actor’s flirtation with Communism. The takeaway seems to be that religion and politics are all very well, but when it comes down to it, you just have to go out there, hit your mark and say your lines.Despite “Hail, Caesar”’s disappointing lack of intellectual heft or emotional impact, the Coens’ full-scale reconstructions of various extinct Hollywood genres are still pretty entertaining—the cowboy shoot-’em-up and super-gay dance routine (“No Dames”!) must be the best of their kind since “Blazing Saddles.” The cast is spectacular, of course; Clooney always seems right at home in a Coen bros. picture, and we expect Channing Tatum, who plays a Communist song-and-dance man, to display some serious chops; Alden Ehrenreich’s ridin’, ropin’ and shootin’ skills are no less impressive.Long story short, this one’s probably best suited to TCM addicts and boomers (like me) who grew up watching stuff like “The Robe” on TV and wondering, “What were they thinking?!” It’s more of a Barton Fink picture, in other words, than a genuine Cohen bros. movie, but it’s well made and quite watchable if you scale down your expectations.