CAUGHT somewhere in a swirling mayhem of period piece, high farce, Hollywood homage and just a little bit of historical/political/religious satire, Hail, Caesar! is a very difficult kind of comedy to describe.
But my goodness, is it funny.
Written and directed by the Coen brothers (Burn After Reading,O Brother Where Art Thou), Hail, Caesar! takes us into the Hollywood film industry of the 1950s, that golden era when films were truly epic productions.
One such production is underway on the Capitol Pictures lot, a biblical epic (as they all seemed to be) called Hail, Caesar!, starring silver screen heart-throb Baird Whitlock (George Clooney).
Amid the chaos of production, studio producer and “fixer” Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) has his work cut out for him making sure that the cameras keep rolling, money keeps flowing and stars keep their massive egos in check.
So when Whitlock is kidnapped from the studio in between scenes, Mannix needs to find him quickly — and quietly — and get the final scenes shot before the incident costs too much money and bad publicity.
While the kidnapping plot forms the central thread of the movie, it is only a single strand of a big glorious shambles of a comedy.
The film intentionally derails itself so many times and screams off into such hilarious tangents that you occasionally forget the main story. And these distractions are simply wonderful, making up the meat of the story — such as it is.
Along the way we meet screen siren DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), who is not the innocent sweetie pie her image suggests; cowboy actor Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), who is a bit out of his depth starring in a dramatic flick that features dialogue; triple-threat musical actor Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), who is featuring in a strangely homoerotic movie about sailors; two muckraking Hollywood reporters, both played by an outstanding Tilda Swinton; and a cluster of movie directors with odd personality issues.
Most of these characters are based on real people and it isn’t hard to work out which real-life Hollywood icons they each represent.
And in this way, Hail, Caesar! is quite a magnificent tribute to the golden age of cinema, combining all the style, cliches and splendour of the era, from the inevitable swords-and-sandals epics to the wholesome images concealing deeply flawed movie stars beneath.
It pokes a lot of fun at the industry of the time and the types of movies that were popular, but does so with a clear sense of love and reverence, just laughing it up with all the innocent frivolity of a gingham-clad dance number in a cheesy western.
The dialogue is so sharp, so dense with playful verbal interplay, that at times I was almost scared to laugh in case I missed a single syllable of it. Just gorgeous writing.
Some highlights of scripting and comedic timing include Hobie’s hopeless first day on the set of his new film and a prickly meeting of four religious leaders discussing the theological issues of the biblical epic.
And in the middle of all this nutty bedlam is that kidnapping plot.
Remember that one?
As integral as it is to everything, it is simultaneously almost vestigial.
In fact, in hindsight, a lot of it actually makes no sense at all.
But I suspect the very pointlessness of it is exactly the, er, point.
It is quite insane. And the big reveal is a marvellous piece of comedy in its own right.
With a fabulous cast — which also includes Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Frances McDormand and Christopher Lambert — it is tempting to call Hail, Caesar! an ensemble piece, but it doesn’t quite fit together like one.
There is a series-of-interconnected-sketches structure to it but the whole production fits together much more fluidly than the typical movie of this type.
Really, this is a difficult beast to describe, but all you need to know is that it is blisteringly funny and well worth your time.
Hail, Caesar! is now showing at Village Cinemas, Cmax and the State Cinema, rated PG.
Rating: four and a half stars (out of five)
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