Hello All,
Well, since we have now passed the always mixed movie bag that is January, we now have our first new releases of February to look forward to, and the first one surprisingly enough is a Coen brothers movie. From my experience I’m used to seeing their films around Oscar season because, as we’ve seen, they do make some really well regarded films. So I was a bit worried when I saw that this was coming out in February. Luckily I managed to get myself into a preview screening, and can now relay my experience to you all. So, how does the latest Coen film stand against their other films? Let’s find out together, shall we?
Plot Summary - Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a Hollywood ‘fixer’, who goes around solving problems for the studio he works at. One of the films he’s helping is a production called “Hail, Caesar”, starring their most famous actor: Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). When Baird gets kidnapped in between takes, Eddie must follow the kidnappers demands to retrieve him, all while managing his other duties and keeping the kidnapping out of the press.
Pros - The cast is phenomenal in this, as every role is perfectly cast. No one feels weirdly out of place and everyone is giving it their best, especially Brolin as the man trying to keep all the craziness together. I do want to make a special mention of Channing Tatum as Burt Gurney, as part way through the film we see him do a full song-and-dance number in character and he just nails it, managing to capture the old Hollywood musical look and feel.
The cinematography is really good too, not only in how they manage to capture the look of the times, but even going so far as to shoot certain scenes in that style. They have paintings as backgrounds, everything is done practically, and it matches the spectacle of that era’s style of films.
As a comedy it does well too, managing to balance the type, the quality, and the pacing of the jokes almost seamlessly. Some jokes will have you laughing at the punchline, while some will have you laughing at the sheer absurdity of what you’re watching in front of you. I honestly can’t think of any jokes, with me at least, that didn’t work.
For the rest of the film in between the comedy bits, you get some good dramatic scenes, as well as some really cool glimpses into Eddie’s job and the type of things he deals with on an average day. I didn’t really find myself bored at any moment as even during slower scenes they’ll have a character do something that seems mundane to them, but manages to entertain the audience in a way that doesn’t feel like padding.That’s a feat that’s actually really hard to do in a movie, especially in a comedy.
Cons - Having Eddie walk around between the various people, places, and film sets can be kind of jarring to some expecting a more fluent story. One minute you’re watching Eddie do his thing, then he’s watching a clip of a sword and sandals movie, or a musical, or a drama, and even a movie with a mermaid in it.
Now as much as I enjoyed the comedy in this movie, as needed to be said with any comedy film, it might not appeal to everybody. That’s not really a negative against this film in particular, I just feel with comedy reviews if it’s not mentioned now then someone might tell me later that they didn’t find it funny even though they went on my recommendation.
Final Score - 10/10
If you can look past the fact that this won’t be a straightforward film, you’ll have yourself a pretty, yet interestingly bizarre film that I honestly think almost anyone would enjoy.
Next up - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. When? I’m not 100% sure, but I’m hoping before the weekend’s over.
So until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.
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