Review: Rules Don’t Apply (2016)

Rules Don’t Apply

Rating

Director

Warren Beatty

Screenplay

Warren Beatty, Bo Goldman

Length

126 min.

Starring

Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich, Warren Beatty, Matthew Broderick, Annette Bening, Candice Bergen, Martin Sheen, Paul Sorvino, Megan Hilty, Paul Schneider, Taissa Farmiga, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Oliver Platt, Alec Baldwin, Michael Badalucco, Dabney Coleman, Steve Coogan

MPAA Rating

PG-13 for sexual material including brief strong language, thematic elements, and drug references

Original Preview

Click Here

Buy on DVD/Blu-ray

Poster

Review

So far removed from the glory days of Hollywood, it’s incumbent upon future filmmakers to relive its glory with alacrity, but also with caution. Rules Don’t Apply ends up being the antithesis of its own title.

Director, screenwriter, and actor Warren Beatty’s ode to Old Hollywood is a glossy look at the legacy of film mogul and aviator Howard Hughes (Beatty) late in his life and career. Painted against this backdrop is a fictional love story between one of his myriad contract actresses (Lily Collins) waiting for her screen test and one of his company’s starlet drivers (Alden Ehrenreich).

Collins and Ehrenreich are destined to be together. That’s how romantic comedies of the era were constructed. While their trip to unity is atypical for that period, the organic nature of their affair helps keep the film from feeling like a hollow paean to a halcyon version of the Hollywood once displayed on screen.

Well accustomed to roles of not-so-subtle innocence (Beautiful Creatures, Hail, Caesar!), Ehrenreich delivers the film’s best performance. Collins is almost his equal and while she hasn’t quite lived up to the promise witnessed in her performance in Mirror, Mirror, the potential is still there. Both end up elevating the mediocre script they have to work with, but it just isn’t enough.

Beatty is appropriately daft as Hughes while Matthew Broderick, Candice Bergen, Megan Hilty, Annette Bening, Taissa Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Oliver Platt, Alec Baldwin, and Paul Schneider provide adequate support.

Beatty’s Hollywood environment is lovingly recreated and his appreciation for the period is evident. The screenplay, which he wrote (he produces, directs, writes, and acts in the film), is a meandering mess filled with faux sentiment that is both testament to and exemplification of all that was once great and awful about that era of filmmaking.

Too often, Beatty allows himself to become the center of the story, sidelining both Collins and Ehrenreich, making them feel more like bystanders to the production than key figures. This is reason enough to suggest that Beatty needs to have someone else write his scripts rather than allowing all the problems with his own to shine through.

His directing talents are likewise muddy, confusing tribute with functionality. He spends lengthy moments attempting to express the awkwardness of Hughes and the effect it has on those around him, but forgets that his film is foremost a love story. That story takes a back seat with frustrating frequency. Yet, the screenplay wouldn’t work without it, making the jumbled whole an ungainly wreck at times.

With Reds and Heaven Can Wait, Beatty emerged as a superb filmmaker; however, the farther removed from those legendary works, the less impressive he becomes. While all of his films have a remarkable craftsmanly style to them, this one just doesn’t come together in the end leaving the audience frustrated and underwhelmed.

Rules Don’t Apply is often a careless pastiche that is never quite as lovely as its original song wonderfully performed by Collins. It’s a sweet, innocent song with a simple, catchy melody surrounded by a sometimes crass, sometimes lazy, sometimes meandering, sometimes forgettable film that deserved so much to be better than it is.