The two lovers in this semi-fictional tale of Howard Hughes, his girl friends, and his bodyguard, are Alden Erenreich, who begins as a driver for Hughes and works his way up to chief cook and bottle washer, and Lilly Collins, a young naif from Front Royal, Virginia, who has put her education on a back burner after being put "on the hook" to Hughes and brought to Los Angeles for a screen test for a movie that will never be made. Their features are such that at time, if you squint properly, it seems that Leonardo de Caprio is kissing Elizabeth Taylor. We follow their careers in parallel.
Warren Beatty, the producer, has brought a fine cast together and put them to work in a sentimental but successful comedy. The character holding the entire massive thing together is Howard Hughes himself, played to the bone by Beatty. He makes no attempt to capture the historic Hughes, the kind of extreme obsessive-compulsive that only great wealth can permit to exist without alarm bells ringing all over the place. Instead, Beatty gives us a loud. cheerful, reckless, clumsy, impulsive, and funny Howard Hughes -- always worrying that somebody's trying to "put me in the nut house." The best illustration has Beatty sitting alone in a darkened theater, listening to some Gofer read back his letter to some law enforcement agency. The letter is about a missing cat that belongs to Hughes' new wife. So we watch Beatty entranced by his own vulgar demands about a man with his resources and the disappeared cat, while Beatty twitches with delight and nods his head emphatically to underline the points his letter is making, perfectly satisfied with himself.
I won't outline the plot but I'll say that it alternates between mostly understated comedy and sober softheartedness, with comedy predominant towards the beginning and emotionalism at the end, leading us to two happy lovers departing Hughes and misleading us to one Hughes and one lost love.
That the rules don't apply is a reassurance given by Erenreich to Collins, who is concerned that the rules of Hollywood require her to give it up despite her stern Baptist upbringing, but of course the rules don't apply to Howard Hughes either. The notion of freedom from norms is caught up in a simple and tune written by Collins, accompanied by rather nifty lyrics. It's not so much that the rules don't apply. It's that to a great extent we make our own rules except for biological imperatives. We all grow up, grow old, and die. And there are several references, in the lyrics and elsewhere, of lost youth and fearful age. Of Collins it has to be said that she's right purty. Her features and gracile physique lend her an adolescent quality that's appealing.
I admire the film especially because it lack the usual dumbed-down quality that afflicts so many Hollywood productions these days. Good job.
Warren Beatty, the producer, has brought a fine cast together and put them to work in a sentimental but successful comedy. The character holding the entire massive thing together is Howard Hughes himself, played to the bone by Beatty. He makes no attempt to capture the historic Hughes, the kind of extreme obsessive-compulsive that only great wealth can permit to exist without alarm bells ringing all over the place. Instead, Beatty gives us a loud. cheerful, reckless, clumsy, impulsive, and funny Howard Hughes -- always worrying that somebody's trying to "put me in the nut house." The best illustration has Beatty sitting alone in a darkened theater, listening to some Gofer read back his letter to some law enforcement agency. The letter is about a missing cat that belongs to Hughes' new wife. So we watch Beatty entranced by his own vulgar demands about a man with his resources and the disappeared cat, while Beatty twitches with delight and nods his head emphatically to underline the points his letter is making, perfectly satisfied with himself.
I won't outline the plot but I'll say that it alternates between mostly understated comedy and sober softheartedness, with comedy predominant towards the beginning and emotionalism at the end, leading us to two happy lovers departing Hughes and misleading us to one Hughes and one lost love.
That the rules don't apply is a reassurance given by Erenreich to Collins, who is concerned that the rules of Hollywood require her to give it up despite her stern Baptist upbringing, but of course the rules don't apply to Howard Hughes either. The notion of freedom from norms is caught up in a simple and tune written by Collins, accompanied by rather nifty lyrics. It's not so much that the rules don't apply. It's that to a great extent we make our own rules except for biological imperatives. We all grow up, grow old, and die. And there are several references, in the lyrics and elsewhere, of lost youth and fearful age. Of Collins it has to be said that she's right purty. Her features and gracile physique lend her an adolescent quality that's appealing.
I admire the film especially because it lack the usual dumbed-down quality that afflicts so many Hollywood productions these days. Good job.