Numbers obtained from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes on February 15, 2016.
My rating IMDb Rotten Tomatoes
Critics Audience Critics Audience
1/10 72/100 7/10 81% 46%
Boring. Waste of money. Waste of time. Waste of talent. No storyline. I could go on, but I think it’s clear by now how much I hated Hail, Caesar!. As I was getting ready to watch this movie, I told my friend that I was afraid this movie would suck because this tends to happen when a great amount of Hollywood starts are together in one single film. Obviously they all want to have interesting arches and lines, to the screenplay ends up being a mess. Ten minutes into the movie it was clear to me and to my friend that our fears were confirmed.
I have heard a lot of people excited about this movie just because it’s written and directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. However, this doesn’t mean that the movie is automatically good.
Set in the 1950s, Hollywood’s Golden Age, it follows a day in the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), an executive producer to has to fix all kinds of problems in the studio, from trying to rescue Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) – a big star who was kidnapped by communists – to covering up scandals, such as the fact that DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is an unmarried mother.
As I mentioned, there are too many characters, each of them with a particular storyline line, none of which are interesting or well developed. For example, Frances McDormand, who plays a film editor, has just one scene that adds nothing to the plot. Jonah Hill also has one scene and his character is involved with DeeAnna’s story but, again, not interesting. Tilda Swinton plays twins who are gossip columnists, with no importance to the main storyline either…
Described as “an homage” to the cinema from the 1950s, Hail, Caesar! was a complete disappointment, not to mention that I would never consider that a homage. If you want to see a movie talking about the film industry in the 1950s and the communists, watch Trumbo. It’s better in every single way.
