Rules Don't Apply

With Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply, there may be some high expectations going in, and it's not because people are looking so forward to finally seeing Alden Ehrenreich and Lily Collins in a (semi) romantic coupling (though they are equal parts charming and serious in this film, able to go to awkward comic moments and those Big Dramatic Confrontation Moments in ways that are wonderful and surprising and shows they have a good director at the helm).

And it's not even because people may be clamoring for another movie about the genius-cum-iconoclast-cum-megalomaniac Howard Hughes, since, well, we should have practically everything we'd need to see in Scorsese's The Aviator (which, by the way, these two movies share not only a couple of set pieces, at very different time periods in history, but Alec Baldwin too in a fairly important supporting role).

No, I know I expect more of Warren Beatty after an 18 year absence (lets forget Town & Country for now) and the biggest problem is that he had final cut and put something together that is 25% a choppily edited mess. Whether he cut down for time, I'm sure I don't know, though having *four* credited editors is never a great sign.

Having said this, however, it's also a case where the parts are better, more entertaining, more charming, more engaging, more... just MORE than the whole, and one of Beattys underrated gifts as an actor and director - off kilter comic timing and eccentricity - is on excellent display here. It's a genuine if somewhat flawed and all over the place romantic comedy with some genuinely moving overtones for being essentially about... Being kind to people.

If this is his swan song, it could've been worse.

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.

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.

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.

When I first saw the trailer that announced Warren Beatty's "comeback" I was thinking at best I would find the movie above mediocre. I personally understand Beatty's stasis as Hollywood Royalty, but I myself am not the biggest fan of any of his films to feel for him like that.

I am a big fan of the film's topics, like Howard Hughes who I love both as Hollywood Royalty and his love of Aviation, two points that Beatty's movie hits upon greatly as he portrays an older version of Hughes, when his reputation turned from eccentric billionaire to complete wack job.

But Beatty's role is more of supporting one as the story centers around two people in Hughes life: Marla Mabrey ,a young scarlet with good Christian values who came to Hollywood and became one of Hughes contract girls, and Frank Forbes, Marla's driver, also with the same Christian values as Marla, that's being broken down by Tinsel Town.

It was met to be one of those quirky comedies about a quirky man, and it should have worked but it did not.

Well if you don't use it you could loose it, cause unlike other senor filmmakers, like Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen, who make film after film in order to keep the blood of creativity flowing, Beatty was living the good life having fun in the son.

Beatty may have taken a little too much time off however, and it does show in this below mediocre film.

Beatty's superstar black book could not help him, either. The parade of movie star cameos only pointed out how dull this movie is.

So, not nearly what I would expect from icon, Warren Beatty but I think I'm putting too much on a man that I don't personally have on a pedestal.

Makes all the right jabs but never hits the spot.

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