Rules Don't Apply

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I have a lot of time for Warren Beatty. He is one of the few people to be nominated for Oscars in the main four categories for a film twice. Best actor, screenplay, director and producer for the films Heaven Can Wait and Reds. Rule Don't Apply is his first film since since 2001. It is set in 1958 Hollywood and follows the romantic relationship between a young aspiring actress who is a devout Christian and her driver. Both are employed by Howard Hughes and according to the rules, both are forbidden to enter a relationship but they do as they wait to meet Howard Hughes. Beatty who can be notoriously slow has been developing this project for more than 40 years after seeing Howard Hughes in a hotel lobby in the early 1970s. The film is billed as a romantic comedy but is just constipated and pallid. Empty as the real life Hughes in his later years when he was filled up with drugs. The only stand out moment is the farcical plane scene in London when Steve Coogan pops up (I presume he took this as an opportunity to appear with a screen legend.) For film nerds it is amusing to see Alec Baldwin show up in another film on Howard Hughes as he also appeared in Scorsese's The Aviator. The only positive I can find is that Beatty the Director used digital to seamlessly blend the vintage film of Hollywood and other places.

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-*-iconoclast-*-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.

source: 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.

This Howard Hughes biopic-drama, was slow and boring and took so long to set-up the pseudo plot. The relationships between the young lovers was not believable. Maybe Beatty should have spent a little more time talking with millennials about expectations of love and sex and playing the game before trying to convince us, this was based on a true story. Flat and one dimensional. There was only one star that had charisma in this movie and that was Warren Beatty. The other actors were average at best and Alec Baldwin is just annoying. Nice try, but it's your time to ride off into the sunset Warren. Also, I felt the cinematography was pretty good, the lighting a little overly dramatic. I wish studios would take more risks on younger filmmakers projects that are relevant to the dating demos. It was almost like Beatty was trying to lasso a new younger aged demo...it didn't work Warren. You're still too old for millennials and Gen Xers.

Or . . . maybe the truth is somewhere in between. The movie worked for me. It felt like ONE movie, not two as reviewer Alonso Duralde claimed. . . . it told stories of several characters all connected more or less. That doesn't make it two movies. The song of the same name is killer -- killer enough to bring the two main characters into a love embrace that crashes them to the floor still locked together. And they're throwing away their "careers" by kissing like that. How can people not love this??? But then things go awry for them almost by accident and partly by puritanical religious beliefs. (She thinks he's married because he once had sex). Anyway, I have to insert here: The Mathew Broderick character gets the Baptist joke mostly wrong. The opening goes, "Why do Babtists forbid you to have sex standing up?" The answer is: Because it might lead to dancing. Broderick says, "Do you know why Baptists think sex is bad?" IT IS WAY LESS FUNNY THAT WAY MATHEW. So I'm going to read more of the negative reviews and perhaps come back and counter any stupid arguments I find for why this movie isn't a great piece of movie-making. I cried in the end. I didn't think they would get another chance. Hooray! By the way, the rather sad classical musical theme throughout is my favorite: Gustav Mahler's 5th Symphony, Adagio movement It's on YouTube.(So is the new song: "Rules Don't Apply").

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.

Warren Beatty was one of the stars of Hollywood long ago. He was tremendous: great screen presence and also unique in getting his movies made. But his ego got the best of him. He could make any movie based on his name. But later in his career his projects bogged down in production and over budget as he couldn't make a decision. Irrespective, I follow his career so I decided to view this movie. Who greenlighted this movie? This movie is incredibly boring. While Beatty attempts to sell it as a love story and keep himself out of the trailers as a primary part of the movie, don't get confused: this is a vehicle to show Warren Beatty. and he's terrible. He has the same low grade laughter he had in Bulworth to project a guy losing his mind. It's terrible and sad. There was a time when he was a legend. That time has gone. twenty years ago. I suspect this will be the last movie he makes. And hopefully the last he ruins.

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. http://cinemagardens.com