A middling muddle

A large part of the appeal of brother auteurs Joel and Ethan Coen lies in their ability to credibly function in multiple modes and genres. They can easily move from ice-hearted noir-ists to metaphysical theorists to zany pranksters, sometimes within the same scene. Of all those modes, I’ve come to like their taste for broad comedy the least. Films like Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, Burn after Reading and O Brother, Where Art Thou? are too big for my taste, too needy to be funny.

Their latest film, the star-studded studio system picaresque Hail, Caesar!, is being sold as a zany comedy, but it actually has a lot more going for it. It’s a slavishly recreated vision of the Hollywood system, as well as a playful dismantling of its phony and pious legends. Yet for all of its ambition and splashy style, this is probably the most aggressively mediocre movie that the Coen brothers have made.

Josh Brolin stars as Eddie Mannix, a 1950s studio executive known for his ability to protect his stars and manipulate the press. Mannix is loosely based on the real-life MGM “fixer” of the same name, but the Mannix of Hail, Caesar! is a straight-arrow Catholic who takes confession every time he sneaks a cigarette, shouldering the sins of his pampered talent in a heroic attempt to uphold a crumbling system.

The kidnapping of the studio’s ironclad star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) becomes the central storyline, although the film barely builds any momentum. Mannix wanders from set to set, and the film wanders from scene to scene, establishing a movies-within-movies-within-movies vibe that’s clever and cute without ever paying off in any meaningful way.

As a series of disconnected scenes skewering old Hollywood, Hail, Caesar! is a blast, as when Channing Tatum pops in to perform a vaguely homoerotic musical number. The production design is predictably meticulous, and the script’s deep-cut references to Nick Schenck and Dave Chasen and Norman Taurog are catnip for cinephiles. But as much fun as it is to play “spot the avatar” (Ralph Fiennes as a George Cukor-ian director is a highlight), there’s no center to hold it together.

We never connect with Mannix as a character, and it feels like big chunks of story are missing from the finished cut. The film moves in stops and starts, and the pace lags considerably between showstopping sequences. Characters drop in and out for no good reason, and long stretches are spent with a likable but largely superfluous supporting character played by newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, presumably because he tested well with preview audiences.

A lot of scenes work as ideas, but not as scenes, especially the ones involving a cabal of Communist screenwriters. There are still those welcome touches of Coen acidity, and as an examination of the hypocrisy of blacklist-era Hollywood, the fantasyland of Hail, Caesar! is at least ten thousand times smarter and more righteous than the based-on-fact Trumbo. But as a Coen brothers’ movie, it’s just OK.