One star. Rated PG-13, for sexual candor and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang
Oh, my.
This may not be Warren Beatty’s
worst film — Ishtar and Town & Country still arm-wrestle for
that distinction — but it runs a close third.
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| Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins), hoping to become a Hollywood star, finds herself spending lots of time with driver Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), who seems a poor substitute for potential mentor Howard Huges. Initially, anyway... |
Much has been made about the
“sudden” appearance of this new Beatty project: the first time he has appeared
on screen since 2001 (in the aforementioned Town
& Country), and the first film he has written, directed, produced and
starred in, since 1998’s Bulworth
(also far from a classic).
Warren, you shoulda stayed
retired.
Alas, too many artists cannot
resist the itch to create, long after common sense should have removed them
from the stage.
In fairness, even at its worst —
and there’s plenty of “worst” to go around — Beatty’s new film reveals traces
of the idiosyncratic sparkle that bloomed to perfection in classics such as Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait. And, at 79 years young, Beatty himself remains a
master of the roguish twinkle and droll double-takes that made him such a memorable
screen presence, back in the day.
But Rules Don’t Apply remains a mess.
It’s the worst sort of
self-indulgent vanity project: a bloated, bewildering, pointless excuse to
shovel several dozen high-profile guest stars into meaningless, ill-defined and
under-developed parts. The so-called story is a muddle — Beatty sharing
scripting credit with Bo Goldman — and the limply executed result commits the
entertainment world’s most unpardonable sin: It’s boring.
Turgid, mind-numbingly dull,
I’d-rather-endure-root-canal-surgery tedious.
It’s also superfluous. While
Beatty is the right age to deliver his interpretation of Howard Hughes’ tragic
final years, there’s no reason to do so. This film’s script offers no
information, no character analysis, that wasn’t covered far better by Martin
Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, in 2004’s The
Aviator.
On top of which, the whole Howard
Hughes riff apparently is intended as mere framing device for a stuttering
courtship between two young lovers caught in the eccentric industrialist’s
disintegrating orbit. It’s a clumsy narrative device, and it fails utterly.
Those who grimly slog through this film’s interminable 126 minutes still won’t
care a whit about any of these characters.
I’m surprised that Goldman
returned to this particular well, having won an Academy Award for writing
1980’s far more successful Hughes project, Melvin
and Howard. Now, that was a
clever, precocious, charming and thoroughly entertaining lark.
All of which are qualities sorely
lacking in Beatty’s newest — and undoubtedly final — misfire.
