Movie Reaction: Rules Don't Apply

Formula: Hail, Caesar! + The Aviator + Crazy, Stupid Love

Warren Beatty is a legend in Hollywood. I'll admit, I don't really know why. He has some successful films and some highly lauded ones, but I've never been all that impressed by the likes of Reds, Dick Tracy, Bugsy, or Bulworth. He hasn't worked much in recent years. Now he's back with Rules Don't Apply: a pet project of his, several years in the making.

Rules Don't Apply is a Howard Hughes story. At least, he's the dominating presence throughout. For much of the film, the leads are Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), a driver who works for Hughes, and Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins), one of several aspiring actresses under contract with Hughes. Frank works for a fleet of drivers who take the young women and occasionally Mr. Hughes wherever they want. They are under strict orders not to engage with the contract actresses romantically. Despite that, Frank and Marla connect. That is, until Howard Hughes (Beatty) and his many, many eccentricities get in the way.

Ehrenreich and Collins are very charming together. Their meet-cute and subsequent interactions drive most of the first half of the film (Also, special thanks to Annette Bening for a memorable few scenes as Marla's overbearing mother). By the second half, the film turns into a Howard Hughes narrative. He gets between the potential young couple as Frank becomes one of his advisers and Marla's film he promised her still hasn't materialized. There's some other developments and a time jump is involved too. Eventually, I wondered what the point of any of it was. The RomCom parts of the film that worked the best are mostly dropped in favor of Howard Hughes antics which, frankly, were better covered in The Aviator. Beatty's version of Howard Hughes is fairly one-note (Daddy issues).

The film feels hopelessly from a different era, which shouldn't be much of a surprise. Beatty hasn't appeared in a film since Town & Country in 2001 and hasn't written or directed a film since Bulworth in 1998. And he didn't even work that often before that. The film is dated but thinks it's being retro. I spent far too much of the movie trying to figure out who the film was supposed to be for.

The individual parts of Rules Don't Apply are fine. I'd love to see Ehrenreich and Collins paired together again. Beatty is having a lot of fun as Howard Hughes. He's collected an impressive roster of actors and actresses like Matthew Broderick, Martin Sheen, Candace Bergen, and Annette Benning for small roles. Individual moments work quite well. All the pieces don't combine to make a coherent whole though. There's no reason why Rules Don't Apply shouldn't be a better movie. It's just not.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend