Tatum, Clooney highlight Coen brothers' 'Hail, Caesar!'
It's tappy, slappy, snappy and happy.
That would be the Coen brothers' new movie "Hail, Caesar!," a winking, blinking, behind-the-scenes Hollywood studio farce with plenty of screen gems to engage us in an otherwise meandering, episodically structured comedy of epic proportion.
Set in 1951 (according to the credits on a "new" movie), "Hail, Caesar!" centers around Eddie Mannix, a Hollywood fix-it man extraordinaire, a one-member S.W.A.T. team who keeps Capitol Pictures on track by covering up mistakes and embarrassments, manipulating the press and anticipating trouble.
Adorned with a sharp fedora and double-breasted suit, Josh Brolin plays Mannix as a serious man and devout Catholic, the kind who goes to confession every 24 hours or so to unload his sins, such as smoking cigarettes after promising his wife he'd quit.
Mannix works in perpetual motion on a schedule. His crowded docket includes inviting religious leaders of all stripes to a comic, headache-inducing meeting to discuss problems with the script to Capitol's new big-budget epic "Hail, Caesar - A Tale of the Christ."
Next, he must help Esther Williams-esque musical star DeeAnna Moran (a woefully underutilized Scarlett Johansson) with a PR problem. She's an out-of-wedlock mother who needs a cover-up story before identical twin gossip columnist rivals Thora Thacker and Thessaly Thacker (both pugnaciously played by the pitch-perfect Tilda Swinton) discover her secret.
Mannix also stops by one of the Capitol studio lots where effete director Laurence Laurentz (a snippy Ralph Fiennes) pulls out his thinning hair while trying to coach drawling, rope-twirling cowboy star Hobie Doyle (an unpretentious and winning Alden Ehrenreich) how to sound uppity and gentlemanly, just like him.
It's more or less hopeless.
But Mannix has a bigger problem.
The lead star to "Hail Caesar - A Tale of the Christ," Baird Whitlock (Coens collaborator George Clooney on maximus doofus overdrive), has been abducted by Hollywood communists at a palatial Malibu beach spread. They demand a $100,000 ransom.
The communists - some of the most pathetic kidnappers ever depicted in the movies - discover that rewiring Baird's brain to embrace anti-capitalistic thinking is one of their easier-met objectives.
All this comes to bear on Mannix's big choice: Stay where he's needed at Capitol or take a lucrative job offer at Lockheed where he would be set for life with no real work to do.
"Hail, Caesar!" takes a while to gain comic traction. The Coens are in no hurry to slide into the world of Mannix, based on a real Hollywood fix-it guy whose heart was probably a bit less golden than Brolin suggests.
His Mannix is a pretty dull straight man in a Jack Webb/Sgt. Friday mode that squanders many opportunities to bump up the comic payoffs of his flightier, more ridiculous co-workers (among them Frances McDormand's hilarious chain-smoking film editor, who gets choked up while working with her Moviola).
Then, out of the red, white and blue comes Channing Tatum as a U.S. Navy sailor in a meticulously crafted, barnstorming dance number that MGM would have been proud to produce during its prime musical years.
That single sequence and Clooney's comically clueless Roman commander would be reason enough to hail the Coens' "Caesar!"
The exquisitely detailed period sets and costumes, plus Roger Deakins' shot-on-celluloid camera work are epic bonuses.
“Hail, Caesar!”
★ ★ ★
Starring: George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Frances McDormand
Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen
Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for smoking and suggestive material. 105 minutes