Hail, Caesar!

Hail, Caesar! is another movie that I have been anticipating for weeks which left me somewhat disappointed.  Normally I am a fan of the Coen Brothers (I love O Brother, Where Art Thou?) but this movie just didn't do it for me.  In the 1950s, the Golden Age of the Hollywood studio system, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a "fixer" for Capitol Pictures.  Throughout the course of one day, Mannix must deal with a brassy Esther Williams-like actress (Scarlett Johansson) who is pregnant out of wedlock, a hysterical director of drawing room comedies, Laurence Laurentz (an ascot-wearing Ralph Fiennes), who has been forced to cast an actor more known for his singing cowboy roles (Alden Ehrenreich) as the lead in his picture, and the abduction of his biggest star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), by a communist cell, all while trying to avoid not one, but two, rival Hedda Hopper-like gossip columnists, Thora and Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton), who happen to be twin sisters.  We see the dim-witted Whitlock filming an incredibly complicated scene for Hail, Caesar! (a biblical picture modeled on Ben Hur) with chariots, horses, and an endless array of extras, only to flub a line, DeeAnna Moran (Johansson) filming a synchronized sequence underwater in a mermaid costume, Burt Gurney (a blond Channing Tatum) filming a song-and-dance number (reminiscent of Singing in the Rain), Hobie Doyle (Ehrenreich) filming an exciting chase scene on horseback, and, in what might be the funniest moment of the movie, Laurence Laurentz trying to coach Doyle through a single line of dialogue ("Would that it were so easy.")  Most of the time I felt like I was watching TCM and falling asleep during one movie and waking up during another because these vignettes had only the thinnest of narratives tying them together:  Mannix is being headhunted by Lockheed and is, therefore, trying to decide if the pictures he produces are worth the hassles of his job.  The pacing is oftentimes very disjointed and the comedy is frequently interrupted by philosophizing on religion, ideology, art, and entertainment (the scene with the Communists is excruciatingly boring).  It's funny, at times, but it wasn't funny enough to sustain my interest for very long.

Note:  Who knew that Channing Tatum could sing and dance so well?