Hail, Caesar! is not the king of Coen brothers' movies

The Coen brothers are known for their unorthodox moviemaking. Sometimes they hit the mark—like with their Oscar-winning Fargo. But in Hail, Caesar!, the film industry inside jokes and dead-end storylines likely will sail past the average audience target.

Hail, Caesar! is a prankish look at the moviemaking business in 1950s Hollywood.

The film walks through a day in the life of Capitol Pictures Studio boss Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who floats from movie lot to movie lot to meet with actors and directors and solve problems in his no-nonsense manner. DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is pregnant out of wedlock—a potential public relations catastrophe for the studio—and can’t fit into her mermaid costume. Director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is losing patience with a popular cowboy film star, Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), who doesn’t have the acting chops for a period drama.

But Mannix’s biggest headache that day occurs when a group of Communist screenwriters kidnaps Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) and demands a $100,000 ransom for his return. Baird is the star of Hail, Caesar!, a nearly completed film (within a film) about a Roman centurion journeying toward faith in Christ.

But moviegoers should not expect any similarity to Risen, an upcoming film starring Joseph Fiennes as a centurion investigating reports of Christ’s resurrection. During a break from filming (in Whitlock’s Hail, Caesar!), a stage assistant looks up at an actor playing a thief on a cross and asks, “Do you want a hot breakfast or a box breakfast?” Later, Baird stumbles over his lines during a compelling monologue about faith. The director yells, “Cut!”, and Baird curses. A send-up of filmmaking’s routine indelicacies? Definitely. A mockery of Christianity? Quite possibly.

The rest of Hail, Caesar! (rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and smoking) jumps back and forth between an effort to rescue Whitlock and a patchwork of quirky scenes from the different movies being filmed at the studio. On one set, a group of male sailors dance together and sing “No Dames.” In another extended sequence, Laurentz and Doyle repeatedly toss the line, “Would that it ‘twere so simple” back and forth, neither able to say it correctly.

Hail, Caesar! is absurd theatre for the 2000s, reminiscent of Eugène Ionesco’s verbal slapstick and Samuel Beckett’s experimentally pointless dramas from the last century. Without a doubt, the Coen brothers expertly shoot and direct the film, but moviegoers are certain to disagree whether or not Hail, Caesar! has much entertainment value.