Rules Don't Apply

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.

I'm surprised that Warren Beatty returned to directing after almost 20 years with another film about a disturbed man who is falling apart. Even more, why make another Howard Hughes film? You'd learn more about Hughes by watching the Tommy Lee Jones film or "The Aviator." Mr. Beatty was trying to be contemporary with the editing of the film (4 editors by the way) by cutting away from a scenes abruptly that were starting to get interesting.

The pace of the romance between the two lead characters was uneven and thus hard to believe. The costumes, production design, cinematography and much of the acting was great, but the narrative was confusing. There was a lot of interesting quirkiness and style, but because the point of view was scattered, it was hard to really get to know the characters.

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': Four Stars (Out of Five)

The new comedy-drama-romance from writer/director/star Warren Beatty; Beatty hasn't directed (or written) a film since 1998's 'BULWORTH', and he hasn't starred in a movie since 2001's 'TOWN & COUNTRY'. In this film he plays the very eccentric, and extremely mentally ill, billionaire Howard Hughes. The movie tells the story of an aspiring young actress, and her driver (who both work for Hughes), that begin a forbidden love affair (forbidden by Hughes). Beatty directed the film and co-wrote it, with Bo Goldman (who also co-wrote such epic dramas as'ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST' and 'SCENT OF A WOMAN'). The movie also costars Alden Ehrenreich (the new Han Solo), Lily Collins, Matthew Broderick, Annette Bening, Haley Bennett, Candice Bergen, Alec Baldwin, Oliver Platt and Martin Sheen. It's received mixed reviews from critics, and it bombed at the Box Office. I liked it though.

Marla Mabrey (Collins) was an aspiring actress, that moved to Hollywood (in 1958) to work for Howard Hughes (Beatty). Mabrey was a devout baptist, from Virginia, that had never done so much as have a drink of alcohol, or engage in premarital sex. She was accompanied by her strict mother, Lucy (Bening). Right away Mabrey and her driver, Frank Forbes (Ehrenreich), are immediately attracted to each other. Frank has a fiancé though, and an affair between the two is strictly prohibited (by their employer, Hughes). Hughes' bizarre quirks, and severe mental struggles, also cause challenges for their relationship.

The movie is pretty interesting, and quite entertaining, at first; then it loses it's way a little, but it does come to a pretty satisfying conclusion. The performances are all good, especially Beatty in the lead; Ehrenreich and Bennett (two very promising up- and-coming actors, that I really like right now) are also good, but severely underused. Beatty's direction is adequate enough, but the script definitely could have used a few more rewrites. I still found the film to be mostly amusing, and somewhat interesting. Howard Hughes was a very fascinating person though, that deserves a much better movie ('THE AVIATOR' was much better).

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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.