Hail, Caesar!

Would that itwerr so simple I really don't love these vignette-style films with a bunch of loose threads that never really join together (Similarly disliked Buster Scruggs). I also generally don't like films set in the Golden Age of Hollywood. I feel like the focus often gets pulled to the setting, a director's "love letter" or "tribute", even satirical, instead of focusing on making a coherent film. Hail Caesar is half baked. It's the definition of flash over substance. It has it's moments - every Clooney scene is great, he was born for Coen films. Channing Tatums dance number, Alden Ehrenreich, Josh Brolin in the confessionals (although somehow not his funniest confession scenes). But these storylines don't belong in the same movie without a real connection. Josh Brolin's character is maybe the least interesting protagonist to appear in a Coen film. In fact, the colourful, realised characters who typically inhabit their films seem somewhat dull. I think maybe the focus on this huge ensemble of A listers and cameos detracts from the quality of each individual character. It's also lacking a certain charm that their more comedic films usually posess. In Fargo, in Lleweyn Davis, in True Grit, it almost feels like an adaptation of a fairytale, of something in a Brothers Grimm story. I don't really know how to describe it so I won't really try. But in their other films there is an element that simply isn't present in Hail Caesar. Oh well. Even the worst Coen film is still, at the very least, an undeniably fun watch.