Rules Don't Apply

Rules Don't Apply (2016)

*** (out of 4)

Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins) arrives in Hollywood as a contract player for the one and only Howard Hughes (Warren Beatty) but before long she realizes all the weird stories she's heard about him are true. She strikes up a friendship with her driver Alden (Frank Forbes), although they can't take it any further due to Hughes' rules about his workers dating his future stars. Before long the two young people grow closer to each other as well as Hughes.

Isn't it shocking that it's been nearly twenty-years since Beatty wrote and directed a movie? It's even more shocking that it's been fifteen-years since he acted in one. There have been rumors of Beatty doing a Howard Hughes bio-pic for decades and it was rather shocking when news broke that he was finally making it. In another shocking turn, what people got certainly wasn't what they expected. I saw the movie six days after its release and it's already bombed with critics and at the box office. Sadly the picture just wasn't what people expected or wanted and who knows if this is the last time we see the legend on the big screen.

I must admit that it's rather shocking to see Beatty basically making an old-fashioned romantic comedy. I mean, he could have done that but why waste his Hughes bio on that type of movie? I want to say that I did enjoy the movie and I found it to be quite charming but at the same time you just have to wonder what was going on with this thing. The picture is certainly uneven to say the least. The first hour is basically the romantic side of the two young characters with Hughes basically a supporting player. The second half of the picture kicks up the drama and darker elements as the romantic couple take a back seat and Hughes gets the attention. I'm really not sure why they done the story this way but it seems like one or the other would have made for something better. Did I mention the strange sex/religion stuff going on?

As I said, once you get over the fact that this isn't the type of movie you're expecting, once you set back into your seat, what we get here is pretty good. I thought the romance actually worked in an old-fashioned type of way and there were certainly some great performances here. Both Collins and Forbes are terrific together. Both of them nail their characters and they also share a terrific chemistry with each other. Collins is really the stand out as she perfectly captures the innocence of her character. Beatty is also terrific in his supporting role. The first portion of the film has him doing a lot of great comic timing but Beatty gets to show his dramatic side in the second half with the character's troubles come into play. It really makes you wonder what he could have done in a straight bio. The supporting players feature some very well-known actors and all of them do a fine job.

RULES DON'T APPLY has some great cinematography, nice music selection and for the most part it's just a charming and fun film. Until the drama starts and then the drama works just fine as well. I just don't think the two mixed all that well and that's why the film seems uneven. Sadly, RULES DON'T APPLY will probably become known as being a major flop, which is too bad because there's a good movie here. Most people probably won't see that because we expected more from Beatty.

Really hope in time I'll realize that I just missed something, but as much as I hate to say it, this was somewhat disappointing. Any Beatty film will certainly have much to praise, and this is no exception - looks great, sounds great, great acting from an incredible cast, many funny moments - but the story doesn't hold up to the superior levels of the other areas. Out of respect for not giving anything away, I'll be vague, but there are a couple of major plot points that are rather forced. I'll trust that the protagonist's eccentricities are accurate reflections, but by the end, I just didn't care and many moments felt more like eccentricity for the sake of eccentricity. I remain such a fan that not sure if I want people to agree with this review or convince me that I'm wrong. My apologies, Mr. Beatty. I'll see anything you make and hope this won't be your last, but overall I didn't find this whole equal to the sum of its parts.

Without a doubt, Howard Hughes was one of the most eccentric and enigmatic figures of the 20th century. A billionaire who went into the movie business, he left his mark on a number of industries. Martin Scorsese focused on part of Hughes's career with "The Aviator". Now Warren Beatty does so with "Rules Don't Apply". This one looks at a relationship between one of Hughes's starlets and her driver in the 1950s. It's not a great movie, but infinitely better than Beatty's last movie, the crime against humanity "Town & Country" (which rivaled Woody Allen's worst movie "Everyone Says I Love You" in being an obnoxious fetishization of neurotic New Yorkers having affairs with each other).

The only thing that drags this movie down is the appearance of two people: Steve Mnuchin (as a banker) and Louise Linton (as a potential starlet). They're now husband and wife. He's Treasury Secretary, while she Instagrammed a photo of herself and tagged the designers, and proceeded to make a let-them-eat-cake remark when a woman criticized her use of a government plane for travel (this was after she published a book purporting to tell of a year that she spent in Zambia, but the entire nation of Zambia disdained it as a promotion of the white savior trope).

Anyway, it's a good movie otherwise. Aside from Beatty, it stars Lily Collins, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Candice Bergen, Dabney Coleman and Ed Harris. To put that another way, it stars Clyde Barrow, Snow White, Carolyn Burnham, Capt. Willard, Jack Ryan, Ferris Bueller, Murphy Brown, a creepy boss and Jackson Pollock.

Rules Don't Apply is a showbiz comedy about two star-crossed lovers. But it might just as well be director, producer and star Warren Beatty's mantra. Every so often the man steps out of whatever dimly lit bungalow he lives in and comes out with a big, bold project that stands quixotically and defiantly against the mores of the time. Reds (1981) grated harshly against the easy money proclivities of the Reagan Era while Dick Tracy (1990) looked backwards through the pulpy pages of loose leaf Americana while we looked on towards a post-communist world. Bulworth (1998), arguably Beatty's most radical film ripped off the facade of the yuppie, blue dog Clinton administration, revealing deep fissures between white liberals and the dreams differed of black Americans (albeit as told through the coddled, tone-deaf worldview of a limousine liberal). Now with Rules Don't Apply, Beatty is in full navel-gazing mode, making a movie so thematically simple that it's conventionality is its own form of radicalism.

The film details the brief stint in La La Land of one Marla Mabrey (Collins), the recently crowned Apple Blossom Queen and new RKO starlet on-call. She arrives fresh-faced from Fresno and encounters naive company driver Frank Forbes (Ehrenreich) who, like Marla, hopes to meet their employer Howard Hughes (Beatty). Problem is, this is 1958 and Howard Hughes has not spoken to anyone outside of his close circle of confidants for years. Caught in a state of arrested development, Frank and Marla begin a chaste attraction which alters their futures in unexpected ways.

Beatty portrays Hughes as a full on Falstaffian character; full of wit and intelligence but far too reckless and in-his-own-head to be taken seriously. He fits himself ever so awkwardly into the center of the action, allowing an ensemble cast of A-listers to orbit around the chaos that Hughes creates. It's an interesting mess to be sure. Hughes is simultaneously the most interesting character in the entire movie and the broadest; less a person than an event like the sinking of the Titanic.

Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich simply can't hope to compete for attention and screen time, even if their pleasant mugs immediately bring to mind James Dean and the luminous Audrey Hepburn respectively. They make the most out of their piddly roles with Collins managing to warble the catchy old-fashion title song and make the whole scene seem relevant. Yet when compared to the exacerbated gasps of Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, Oliver Platt, Steve Coogan and Matthew Broderick, our two lovers are completely washed out of the film's more interesting excesses.

And there are some pretty fun excesses. There are solid if low- hanging comedic setups, snappy dialogue and goofy sequences of frenetic action which would otherwise seem slight if not for the fact that comedies are straight-up never made like this anymore. They also keep the ball rolling, making sure everything makes sense without much dead air.

In a career spanning nearly seventy years, Warren Beatty is about the closest thing to Hollywood royalty you got still working today. If you ignore his filmography, and have the patience to sit through a few stale jokes, Rules Don't Apply is basically a lesser Cafe Society (2016). Yet considering Beatty's work is often ahead of its time, Rules Don't Apply is basically a 90's Ganz/Mandel comedy mimicking the sensibilities of the 30's taking place in the 50's starring a guy not relevant since the 80's.

I love Warren Beatty, I always have. First time I saw him in a movie was in Bonnie and Clyde. For me his name had something magic. Splendor In The Grass, The Roman Spring Of Mrs. Stone, Lilith. The beauty of the man didn't seem to interfere with the character he was playing, remember All Fall Down? I waited for Rules Don't Apply with feverish anticipation, like I haven't waited for a movie since I was a kid. I sat through it for the first time, amused, surprised and delighted. But a few hours later the film started unreeling in my mind. Candice Bergen? Did I see Candice Bergen playing a secretary, handing papers, standing in the background, staring at the TV, on the phone? No, it couldn't be. Candice Bergen for goodness sake, an American icon. The thought muddled my memory of the film. I saw Rules Don't Apply again last night. Yes, it was Candice Bergen. Wow! What one will do for friends. On a second viewing I saw it as an unsentimental valentine to what it was, with a hopeful wonderous future beyond us way beyond us. I'll see it again soon and see what happens. Cheers Mr Beatty.