Verdict
Summary
Despite all its failures, there’s a weird, limp charm to Hail Caesar, and I think it works best as a very late night movie to watch as a curiosity that somehow feels like it was made and released 10 years too late.
Plot:
An aspiring rocker gets a job at a pencil eraser factory to prove that he can hold a job and get a steady paycheck, but it leads to problems.
Review:
Bleached blonde Irish American would-be rocker Julius Caesar MacGruder (Anthony Michael Hall, also in his directorial debut) has the hots for a rich girl named Buffer (Bobbie Phillips), whose father owns a pencil eraser factory that apparently rakes in the big bucks. Julius’s boss (Nicholas Pryor) won’t have him for a son-in-law unless he can prove that he’s actually bringing something to the union other than big dreams and a lot of hot air, and so they make a bet: Julius has to make a hundred grand in six months or hit the road, and so Julius works hard trying to promote his band Hail Caesar with the hopes of landing an agent and a record deal, but everyone at the eraser factory hates him and picks on him for actually aspiring for better things. While working at the factory, Julius accidentally uncovers a conspiracy within that will prove that his boss is trying to destroy the place and collect insurance money in a scam, but while trying to prove it, he ends up in the slammer himself, blamed for the crime he uncovered. Things work out for Julius Caesar MacGruder in the end … his name will be cleared, he’ll get the girl (not Buffer, but another girl who actually loves him), and a record deal too.
An odd, off-kilter vanity project if there ever was one, Hail Caesar was apparently inspired by a Mark Twin story, but filtered through late ’80s ‘ early ’90s madcap comedies, and starring Michael Hall, who is somewhere between annoying and self deprecating in this. He seems to be in on the “joke” that he’s the punching bag through the whole movie, but the film’s biggest problem is that it’s just not funny … at all. Every joke and set up falls flat, and even with some cameos by Hall’s buddies Judd Nelson and Robert Downey Jr. don’t work, despite how hard they try. The movie has a supporting role for Samuel L. Jackson, but he seems like he belongs in another movie altogether in scenes where he’s a disgruntled mailman / handyman who can’t catch a break. Despite all its failures, there’s a weird, limp charm to Hail Caesar, and I think it works best as a very late night movie to watch as a curiosity that somehow feels like it was made and released 10 years too late.
MVD Rewind Collection’s new Blu-ray edition (it’s #54 on the spine) comes in a very unremarkable transfer that had some blur and splotching and reminded me of some of the transfers that Mill Creek puts out on Blu-ray. The first run of this title comes with a slipcover and a fold out poster. There’s also a trailer.
