Friday, February 17, 2017

Beatty's "Rules" an absolute waste of time



What do you get when you combine a young Hollywood dreamer (Lily Collins), an ambitious chauffeur (Alden Ehreinech) for the rich and famous, and a reclusive Los Angeles billionaire (Warren Beaty, playing the iconic Howard Hughes)?  Apparently you get Rules Don't Apply, a movie that's marketed as a comedy (without laughs) and a drama (without any ... anything, really), and a new low for Beatty, who here triples as the writer, director and star.  The movie packs in standard Hollywood wide-eyed-starlets wanting to make it big, continuation of Hughes' fascination with airplanes story (it picks up more or less where Scorsese's The Aviator left off), and it features the oddest love triangle in a while (that sex scene between Beatty and Collins' characters is way out of place, both narratively and logically).  I realize I haven't told you much about the movie's plot, but that's because - and take my word for it - it is either incomprehensible or too awful to summarize; why in the world did Beatty wait more than a decade and a half to come out of reclusion only to deliver this turkey is beyond me.  Rules Don't Apply is proof that a Hollywood legend's touch is nowhere near where it once was, and that movies, as much as they can create wonder and awe, can also double as mentally and spiritually torturous experiences.
D-

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