Eddie Mannix is known as “A Fixer” at Hollywood’s Capitol Pictures in1950s jargon. He tries to keep a tight rein on a corral full of wayward actors, writers, and even extras in order to keep their ‘movie picture’ productions on time and within tight budgets. He has just constructed a scenario to save the career of an unwed pregnant female swimming star by arranging her to adopt the yet-to-be born child.
An up and coming young cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is a western star who can ride, rope, and romp and, incidentally, gets second billing. The studio’s comic attempts to translate his Texas drawl into a British accent gets a few of the sparse laughs in this flick.
Mannix (Josh Brolin) gets his greatest challenge when Braid Whitelock (George Clooney), the studio’s biggest star, is kidnapped from the set of an epic sword and sandal movie “Hail Caesar.” A ransom of $100,000, is easy money but difficult to deliver.
Most disappointing is placing a talented actor like George Clooney in a “third banana” status. Clooney never gets his arms around this role because Whitelock’s character is thoroughly fog bound.
Elaborate 50’s Esther Williams and Gene Kelly takeoffs are wasted. To add confusion Tilda Swinton plays two gossip columnists (Hopper and Parsons?) dressed identically with only the position of a feather on her hat to mark the difference.
This flat out parody of the ’50’s movie industry has more twists and turns than a bowl of Olive Garden spaghetti. It is a hodgepodge that puts the audience in a hypnotic trance rather than in a LOL state of mind.
Grade “Hail Caesar” with a D for disastrous. You’d do better by seeing a Bogart and Bacall black and white movie on TCM.
Jack Petro reviews movies for Villages-News.com
