Grade: C-
Verdict: After years of kicking it around, Warren Beatty’s passion project is sadly forgettable.
Warren Beatty was once a Hollywood superstar, renowned for both acting and directing, coveted as a striking hot talent with the dimpled chin to put all other chins to shame. I’m sure plenty would recognize him from 1990’s “Dick Tracy,” and those interested in film probably know him as Clyde from 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” or his Oscar-winning 1981 film “Reds.” He’s been around a long time and his name stands as a mark of quality (for older audiences at least; I’m not sure many GSU students would pick him out of crowd.)
After hiding away for a while, he finally returns with a new film, “Rules Don’t Apply.” Unfortunately his long directorial hiatus ends with a disappointment. “Rules Don’t Apply,” the first film he’s directed since 1998’s “Bullworth,” is far from stunning.
It’s 1958 and Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins) is a young Baptist beauty queen who hauls all the way from Virginia to Hollywood with a brand new RKO contract (in those days actors were hired by a studio, not hired per film as they are now.) She’s sweet and lovely but not afraid to make stink when weeks go by without hearing from her new boss, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes (Beatty).
Luckily her driver Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich) is there to comfort and entertain her. They quickly develop a friendship-plus-feelings situation,but both are restricted by their upbringings: Marla’s Baptist sentiments prevent her from kissing anybody, and Frank, a Methodist, is unhappily engaged to a girl he banged once because she believes sex means forever.
Religion is beach-balled all over the place in this film, but not with any interesting insights. In an interview Beatty demonized American puritanism as the film’s main point of tension, and indeed “Rules Don’t Apply” stops short at that lackluster conclusion, “Religion is bad.”
Plus, by the end religious sentiment is almost entirely forgotten as the film gets wrapped up in a sudden “gags or nothing” mentality that emerges when Hughes is finally introduced as a central character. The real Howard Hughes is a sad story, but he’s played by Beatty mostly for jokes, with only a handful of scenes pointing to his inner turmoil (thanks in part to some well-crafted shadowy cinematography by Caleb Deschanel.)
This jokey portrayal can be charming and some of the jokes do land– Beatty underscores some weird, dare I say quirky delights, like a hotel lobby filled to the brim with tubs of banana nut ice cream and a midnight burger dinner spent admiring a huge plane– but the film struggles to make any kind of meaningful point.
It strives for grand things: showing the beginnings of 60s feminism, anti-puritanism, exploring Hughes’ neuroses and sadness and the way Marla’s and Frank’s relationship ebbs and flows. But that’s a lot, and when half the movie is devoted to a bland love story (sorry Lily and Alden, I wasn’t feeling it) and the other half privileges jokes over character, well, it’s hard to flesh all those ideas out.
“Rules Don’t Apply” won’t be remembered as a great edition to Warren Beatty’s filmography. Rent it when it comes out for a few bucks and save your money for one of the better love stories in theaters right now.
