Post by Brad Nelson on May 21, 2020 16:28:32 GMT -8
This afternoon I watched the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! It’s flat. You can tell they tried hard to say something but ended up having very little to say. But if you’re stuck inside, it’s a least passably watchable.
High praise indeed. The bright spot is Josh Brolin who plays a studio executive whose main job is basically that of a circus ringmaster. He’s applying a sense of order when needed. And it’s usually needed everywhere.
Clooney is forgettable as top Hollywood studio star, Bair Whitlock. But this is mostly the fault of the script and direction, not him. Alden Ehrenriech is good as the cowboy star, Hobie Doyle. The actor gives it his all in a fish-out-of-water part that fails coming and going except for his dedication to fleshing out what he could with the role.
The rest of the cast is eminently forgettable, except perhaps for the dutiful secretary, play by Heather Goldenhersh, who is always at Josh Brolin’s side.
And Veronica Osorio is momentarily charming as Carlotta Valdez, the Carmen Miranda character (I guess). Again, she enlivens a role that is given very little meat as the Coen Brothers take their shtick to the logical conclusion of pointlessness and overindulgence.
Only Brolin ties this hash of a movie into something watchable. And because I think the Coen Brothers have run out of ideas, it’s the reason you see the obvious technique of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if somethings sticks. They could have paired out a lot of this nonsense and fleshed out a few of the story lines better and perhaps had something.
This all feels like shtick they had collected in their notebooks over the years and had wanted to use but couldn’t make it fit into any of their other films. Well, it doesn’t fit well here either. The Coen Brothers inability to take anything seriously (even in jest) dooms this film to irrelevancy. But Brolin, despite all this, is the one thing in the film with a point and the only character you will care about.
High praise indeed. The bright spot is Josh Brolin who plays a studio executive whose main job is basically that of a circus ringmaster. He’s applying a sense of order when needed. And it’s usually needed everywhere.
Clooney is forgettable as top Hollywood studio star, Bair Whitlock. But this is mostly the fault of the script and direction, not him. Alden Ehrenriech is good as the cowboy star, Hobie Doyle. The actor gives it his all in a fish-out-of-water part that fails coming and going except for his dedication to fleshing out what he could with the role.
The rest of the cast is eminently forgettable, except perhaps for the dutiful secretary, play by Heather Goldenhersh, who is always at Josh Brolin’s side.
And Veronica Osorio is momentarily charming as Carlotta Valdez, the Carmen Miranda character (I guess). Again, she enlivens a role that is given very little meat as the Coen Brothers take their shtick to the logical conclusion of pointlessness and overindulgence.
Only Brolin ties this hash of a movie into something watchable. And because I think the Coen Brothers have run out of ideas, it’s the reason you see the obvious technique of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if somethings sticks. They could have paired out a lot of this nonsense and fleshed out a few of the story lines better and perhaps had something.
This all feels like shtick they had collected in their notebooks over the years and had wanted to use but couldn’t make it fit into any of their other films. Well, it doesn’t fit well here either. The Coen Brothers inability to take anything seriously (even in jest) dooms this film to irrelevancy. But Brolin, despite all this, is the one thing in the film with a point and the only character you will care about.