Movie Review: ‘Hail, Caesar!’

The Coen brothers' latest comedy "Hail, Caesar!" starring Josh Brolin and George Clooney, is a love letter to the golden age of Hollywood. Time Warner Cable News film critic Neil Rosen filed the following review.

Meet Eddie Mannix, the studio fixer at Capitol Pictures. These days, Eddie's got a lot of fixing to do. The star of his mermaid movie, an Ester Williams type played by Scarlett Johansson, is pregnant and has no husband. That is a potentially big scandal back in 1951.

The matinee star of Capitol's cowboy pictures, played charmingly by Alden Ehrenreich, is being forced to segue in to a sophisticated Noel Coward type drama. However, despite the directors' coaching, he just cannot pronounce the lines correctly.

But the biggest problem that Mannix has to take care of is the kidnapping, by disgruntled Communist screenwriters, of the studio's biggest star played by George Clooney. And it happens right in the middle of shooting their biggest picture of the year.

It's a madcap, zany romp in the Coen brothers inimitable style and can be seen as a companion piece to one of their earlier films, "Barton Fink."

What makes this work is the peek behind the curtain as we get to see the goings on inside a film studio. There are elaborate productions numbers of several movies within the movie. A sailor musical starring  Channing Tatum is particularly exceptional. Then the camera pulls back and you are on the set seeing the nuts and bolts of how Hollywood magic is made.

The Coen's seem to be having a ball recreating all these different styles of films, and they get the look, including the makeup and costumes of these old movies, exactly right. If you are fond of this era, as I am, you will have fun.

As Mannix, Josh Brolin is terrific and also quite funny, handling Hedda Hopper-type gossip columnists, played by Tilda Swinton in dual roles.

"Hail, Caesar!" is a bit disjointed and the story fall apart by the end, but who cares? It is an often-hilarious valentine to movie making in another era, and a good one at that.