I saw this about a year after it came out and while I'd say The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was an infinitely better movie, it just falls under the same unimpressive pattern that the Coens have provided for a little over the last decade. I would easily say that Hail Caesar was by far their worst movie. Both Caesar and Ballad both seem like attempts to put fully developed ideas to motion by just scaling them into a segment instead of fleshing the idea to full fruition. As an example, they have a pretty good dance number in Caesar, but in the grand scheme of things, it means absolutely nothing. The worst disservice was underwriting the characters, which seems to be a trait of the Coens anymore, there was just nothing worth mentioning about any of them.

This is disappointing since that used to be their best attribute when you look at movies like Bloodsimple, Fargo, Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona and even NCFOM, which I didn't care for.

Here you just have a movie with a bunch of silly characters and a main protagonist who doesn't attain any sympathy or reason to care. Even some of the gags could've used work, as an example when the briefcase is dropped in the water due to Tatum catching his dog. It would've gotten a better reaction if the briefcase throw came up massively short instead. Other scenes go on for too long like Fiennes speaking to Ehrenreich about his accent, it goes on far too long. Ehrenreich's character is rather annoying in general and it feels like they recycled him for Buster Scruggs, for the better I guess, but even that I think would've worked better in a different role.

I guess the one takeaway from all this is it's just a bunch of ideas thrown together with not much else to connect them, plus I just really hated all the characters. Hopefully the Coens will recourse themselves and figure something out in their next movie.