FILM REVIEW: Hail, Caesar! (2016)

'Hail, Caesar!' manages to be supremely disjointed while remaining thematically coherent. At times, it just feels like a bunch of barely connected (but quite funny) riffs on old Hollywood. Channing Tatum and Alden Ehrenreich shine, the former with a balletic goofiness and the latter with irresistible charm. The musical numbers are great. There are some funny cameos (Dave Krumholtz yelling "PARASITIC" made me laugh a lot). Ultimately, though, it feels like the Coens are having fun at the expense of pacing.

However, what keeps 'Hail, Caesar' afloat is its poignant message about faith. Where 'A Serious Man' dealt directly with Judaism, this is overtly concerned with what it means to be Christian (or, at least, what it means to enact an idealized form of Christianity). Our protagonist, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), is torn between an easy but destructive world and a tough but giving one; between suffering for the good of escapism and relaxing for the sake of the thing that causes the need for said escapism. And these two warring sides are what essentially drive every character: complexity vs simplicity, momentum vs stagnation, reality vs truth (and those are two different things here). And in the last five minutes, when all of these ideas come together, it is truly sublime.

Still, in the midst of things, it often just feels like a series of hilarious tangents. I wish the Coens' had found a way to meld their thematic ideas with their comedic instincts less jarringly. It's just a few cut digressions from being fantastic.

Rating: **** / 5