Review of Hail, Caesar! (2016) by Warwick B — 10 Mar 2016

The Cohen brothers latest movie Hail, Caesar!, a madcap caper about a mysterious disappearance and shady underground gang, won't have your abdominals in searing pain because of induced laughter.

Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a post war Hollywood 'fixer' that fictional Capital Pictures relies on to keep its stars shining, covering up the behaviour not befitting of their carefully curated images.

When dimwit Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the lead actor in the blockbuster epic Hail, Caesar!, is kidnapped and held to ransom by a group of communist sympathisers calling themselves The Future, it falls to Mannix to recover him for the studio.

At nearly two hours in which nothing really happens, Hail, Caesar! is a boring and tedious movie, and not the knockout star studded Hollywood comedy the critics say it is.

This strangely unremarkable film mostly leaves you feeling disappointed except for two giddily, enjoyable moments to the Golden Age of Tinseltown - a Gene Kelly-esque, sailors on shore leave in a bar song and dance routine by tap dancing Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) and aquatic queen Dee-Anna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) being spurted out of a whale's blowhole in a sparkly swimsuit.