Coen brothers’ ‘Hail, Caesar!’ is goofy but threadbare: 2.5 stars

The Coen brothers’ “Hail, Caesar!” isn’t much of a movie, but as an affectionate (mostly) valentine to the Golden Age of Hollywood filmmaking, it’s a generally enjoyable goof.

The threadbare plot devised by Joel and Ethan Coen provides the siblings with multiple opportunities to go behind the scenes at the massive (and fictional) Capitol Pictures studio in Los Angeles in the 1950s.

We get to watch as America’s fantasies are brought to life. But as with sausages and laws, sometimes it’s best not to know how they’re made.

Kicking the yarn into motion is the kidnapping of stiffly handsome matinee idol Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), whose current assignment is to play a Roman centurion in the biblical epic “Hail, Caesar!”

Josh Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, the studio’s production chief whose real job is to clean up the studio’s messes. He gets to work recovering his ransomed movie star.

That’s about it for story.

The pleasures of “Hail, Caesar!” (the Coen brothers movie, not the “tale of the Christ” being filmed on the Capitol lot) are to be found in its satire/celebration of iconic Hollywood personalities and situations that Eddie confronts.

Early on he convenes a meeting of faith leaders who have been asked to comment on the screenplay for “Hail, Caesar!” It’s the movie’s funniest scene and a wickedly barbed send-up of institutionalized religion.

He drops off the ransom money on a soundstage where a Gene Kelly-ish song-and-dance man (Channing Tatum) is shooting a big production number about a crew of sailors dismayed at the prospect of eight months at sea without women. Not only are Tatum’s acrobatic musical comedy skills first-rate, but the slyly homoerotic elements of the dance routine suggest that these Navy swabs will find ways to let off steam during their voyage somehow.

Eddie also must contend with twin gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton) and the potty-mouthed Esther Williams-type star of aquatic musicals (Scarlett Johansson) whose mermaid outfit now won’t fit because of pregnancy (she’s unmarried).

Among other big names in the cast are Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill and former “Highlander” Christopher Lambert. And Frances McDormand has a hysterical scene as an eccentric film editor who lives in an eternally vampiric half-light.

But stealing the movie is relative newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, who plays Hobie Doyle, a good-natured singing cowboy who is a lot smarter than his aw-shucks demeanor suggests. Hobie takes it upon himself to locate the kidnapped movie star.

Clooney’s characterization seems to have been inspired by the gorgeously vacant Robert Taylor. Baird is so thick that he quickly takes the politically motivated side of his abductors.

But something at the heart of “Hail, Caesar!” doesn’t click. Brolin’s Eddie seems to have come from another film. He’s not at all comic. In fact, he seems tormented about the lose-lose moral choices that are inherent in his job (this may explain why he goes to confession every day).

Moreover, the film takes an ambivalent approach to both religion and the Hollywood Commie witch hunt then underway. Hard to tell where the Coens are coming from on these subjects.

Go for the laughs. But don’t expect the spell of “Hail, Caesar!” to stick with you beyond the closing credits.

This story was originally published February 4, 2016 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Coen brothers’ ‘Hail, Caesar!’ is goofy but threadbare: 2.5 stars."