83% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: It's alright
Watch it if you: Like the Coen brothers; like really weird and quirky humour; really really like the Hollywood industry (because you work in it); aren't expecting anything great; want to laugh a little but also have some philosophical insight into the Hollywood industry
This film, being a love letter to Old Hollywood, follows studio producer/fixer Eddie Mannix and the seemingly never-ending list of studio problems he needs to fix.
A potential PR nightmare with a knocked-up actress, an image-changing cowboy-turned-drama-actor transformation, and a handsome tap-dancer with a little (big) secret and it's no wonder Mannix is having problems trying to quit smoking.
He's the fixer, after all. He does whatever it takes to fix the studio's issues to boost up their image. And since there's not enough already on his plate, his main star has been kidnapped and he needs to pay a $100,000 ransom...quickly.
There is a lot going on in this film, and yet, this film is pretty much about... nothing.
It is very hard to place because it is so weird and wacky, so funny and yet sometimes so cringeworthy.
The trailer sold it as a movie with an ensemble cast working together to try and get George Clooney (their main star) back. And yet, some of the big faces in the movie (Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes) don't do much at all. Heck, even George Clooney doesn't do much and I would say he's the second main character!
So the film pretty much relies on the Coen brothers' quirky sense of directing as well as Josh Brolin's great acting (which, luckily, it was).
The Coen Brothers do a great job at making a lot of their shots look like postcard shots, so the film is really visually pleasing, which is nice. It's also quite funny, even just looking at say, how Channing Tatum stands in a particular scene, can be funny.
The film is also really meta, and this is the part where it's going to be the indicator of whether you like it or not. As I said, the film isn't really about anything in particular because it's about Hollywood in general.
This comes as a huge advantage at times; you get to see some really great movie-within-a-movie moments, there's quite a bit of diversity in the things you are seeing, and it just looks amazing to be able to see everything all come together. A lot of stuff that goes behind making a movie is seen: huge sets are built for some scenes, the director doing cuts and yelling out directions for the actors ("Squint... SQUINT AGAINST THE GRANDEUR!"), actors looking like perfection and then struggling to get out of their tight costumes, the old-timey grain you can see in the movie-films, even just seeing all the cameras and film reels in operation was pretty cool.
However, the film becomes a bit of a mess. The variety of things you are seeing appear to be the awkward result of an amalgamation of wonderfully wacky ideas the Coen brothers had that didn't have enough steam to take into a full movie. The movie-within-a-movie moments go as quickly as they appear and, despite you wishing so very hard for them to come together nicely at the end, they don't. They kind of just leave you hanging. All the behind-the-scenes stuff you see can get kind of boring or dragged out.
It becomes a film you're not sure will be received well by the general public because... well, if you write a love letter to a particular human being, if a third party reads it and does not really know much about the intended human being, who's to say they will enjoy reading the love letter? Similarly, being a love letter to Hollywood means that people who work in the Hollywood industry would probably love it, but it's going to be weird for a lot of people. Towards the end, the film is really hammering in the fact that the Coen brothers LOVE Hollywood, so much so that they believe Hollywood is "the RIGHT thing" to follow. It's almost religious. Instead of being bible bashed, you are movie-mauled by the dogma of everything.
Having said that though, the film is still enjoyable by the general public because it's pretty funny (I say pretty funny, because there are only moments of hilariosity, the whole movie in itself wasn't all funny). There are some great moments where a line is said just ONE more (or several more) times, making it ten times more hilarious. There are some moments where it lingers just that second longer on a person's hysterical face, making it ridiculously amusing. The best scene in the film (refer to the title of this blog) has both of these and had the audience laughing like crazy.
So, it wasn't a great film, and it probably won't be a satisfactory film for a lot of people, but I still think it was an enjoyable peek into the whimsical minds of the Coen brothers. Don't watch it for the plot, or because Scarlett Johansson is in it and you think she's going to be super hot and seduce you with her beautiful voice. Don't even watch it because George Clooney's in it. If you watch the movie for these reasons, you are sure to be disappointed.
BUT, watch it for the humour, and the very unique and quirky style of directing, and you... might not be disappointed.
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