One young lady’s trip up the ladder of Hollywood’s elite becomes complicated by the game of love between competing suitors. In “Rules Don’t Apply”, the newest film written, directed and starring Warren Beatty, we meet An aspiring young actress in Marla (Lily Collins) and her ambitious young driver (Alden Ehrenreich) struggling hopefully with the absurd eccentricities of the wildly unpredictable billionaire Howard Hughes (Warren Beatty) for whom they work. It’s Hollywood, 1958. Small town beauty queen, songwriter, and devout Baptist virgin Marla Mabrey (Collins), under contract to the infamous Howard Hughes (Beatty), arrives in Los Angeles. At the airport, she meets her driver Frank Forbes (Ehrenreich), who is engaged to be married to his 7th grade sweetheart and is a deeply religious Methodist. Their instant attraction not only puts their religious convictions to the test, but also defies Hughes’ #1 rule: no employee is allowed to have any relationship whatsoever with a contract actress. Hughes’ behavior intersects with Marla and Frank in very separate and unexpected ways, and as they are drawn deeper into his bizarre world, their values are challenged and their lives are changed. “Rules Don’t Apply” is rated PG-13 for sexual material including brief strong language, thematic elements.

“Rules Don’t Apply” is the perfect title for a movie like this. It simply doesn’t follow any rules in filmmaking that deal with structure, direction, conceptual tone, pacing, or even editing. To say that this movie is an incoherent mess is going light on it for the very opinions of pretentious film critics. I’m going to give it to you straight; this is possibly the biggest disappointment of the year for me, as I had previously invested a lot into the comeback of Beatty, as well as the A-list cast that accompany him. This movie about the mysterious Hughes had so much promise and capability to tell a story that very few actually know, but instead it’s a mostly fictional, flimsy piece of film that kept me bored through a majority of it. Beatty’s original directing effort in “Dick Tracy” might not be something that many people enjoyed, but I loved it for its crisp art direction and comic book flow that was certainly ahead of its time. So I was interested to see what the charismatic star had for us twenty-six years later. Boy do I wish I could take that wish back.

This is a dual narrative story that never really focuses on one soul protagonist. One could argue that Ehrenreich, Beatty or Collins is the leading role for this movie, but no answer ever feels distinguishingly satisfying against all other arguments. So immediately we don’t know who’s story this is going to be. There’s a romantic difficulty storyline with Collins and Ehrenreich that would be refreshing by itself when played against the backdrop of 1950’s Hollywood, with all of its taboos and seductions. But I then remembered that this story’s trailer was deeply involved with that of Hughes, in that it followed his everyday wacky situational trysts among the Hollywood elite. What doesn’t work about the Hughes tier of this movie is that after two hours of film I still don’t feel like I know anything about the character. There are certainly some liberties taken with his involvement in Collins fictional character, but I found myself actually checking the Wikipedia for Howard Hughes post movie to see how much was true, and that is what disappointed me. This movie had a great promise to tell Howard’s story, but it cuts him short around every great reveal. For a movie that is deeply imbedded in Hughes, it certainly doesn’t do him any favors in giving us a visionary that the world has come to know him by. This is very much the bumbling, decay side of Howard. This wouldn’t be a problem for Beatty who has great dramatic range, but as a director he stinks at developing a proper tone in attitude for the movie, so the things that should be the saddest are presented in a highlight of light-hearted humor that never feels funny. I felt greatly for the character of Hughes, and wish he was in a stronger movie to relate the kind of empathy that his suffering entailed.

Then there’s the editing that I have never seen anything like. Throughout the film, but in particularly the first act, there’s choppy editing that seems to offer a dual problem of either cutting scenes too short or having them run for far too long. This gave me a feeling that the editor was sometimes on a sugar high in some scenes, but in a coma for others. This aspect never allows the movie to run smoothly from judgmental hands, and every time I found myself invested for even a minute, my faith was cut short time and time again. I can’t believe this got passed for a final product because this is first step movements in the editing superlative. To see some of these scenes end mid sentence without ever cutting back, felt like someone was playing a prank on the audience, and the real scene would be presented later on to feel appropriate to a plot gimmick. But it never does. Some scenes could easily be cut because their new establishing shot between the characters is only used for one sentence, and then cuts us to somewhere else. It’s breathtaking in that it does so much harm to the development of these characters, and this laughably bad factor is the only way I could ever recommend something so lacking.

I would be a joke of a critic if I didn’t mention the pacing, which also gave me a first in my 839 reviews that I have done so far. When you tell somebody that a movie was boring, they typically take that as a film’s pacing was too slow, and they would be correct. That rule however is about to change, as this movie bored me to death because of its fast-pacing, which never slowed down. I’m truly perplexed by how a movie could run so quickly, yet be the most boring thing that you could possibly imagine. There’s a lot that Beatty as a screenwriter hurls at the audience, and with this quick-cut editing that never takes time to let anything soak in, we’re never given the chance to digest the current before absorbing another devastating blow. I seriously lost my belief in this film about halfway through, and couldn’t believe that I still had another hour with these characters because it felt like I had already spent life with every one of them. By the end of this movie, should you choose to see it, you will feel like you just sat through the entire Labor Day marathon of “Band of Brothers”, except ya know, that was great and beneficial to your investment.

As for positives, the movie is at least capably acted by an A-list cast that rivals any other movie ensemble this year. Beatty certainly grasps enough influence among the elite to present some against-type turns for some promising young actors, as well as some familiar veterans. Lily Collins stole my heart during a rendition of her original musical number “Rules Don’t Apply”. What works about her as an actress in this role is that Collins has that 50’s starlet look in her physical appearance, and feels believable playing against the blonde bimbo stereotype that Hollywood feels overrun by. Her sweetness and radiance make her a fitting hit, but what about her love interest. In Ehrenreich, we have already seem him dazzle during the golden age of cinema in “Hail, Caeser”, but here his length in screen time and lines are practically tripled, granting us a longer breath of fresh air for the future. He oozes a kind of Matt Damon charm in his delivery, and certainly captures a range of emotions in the ever-changing diagram of his character. The magic between he and Collins is there, but unfortunately it’s always cutting away to Beatty’s dream role. In that, Beatty does prove he still has it, omitting the unraveling psyche of Hughes later years. With a better direction by himself (Imagine the laughter of that), this could’ve been Oscar brilliance. What is missing though, is there’s never any heart to what makes Hughes tingle as a genius. We’re never given brilliance in execution, and this sadly feels more like another impersonation in movies, as opposed to the actor becoming that person.

This is also a very beautiful picture, as lots of the Hollywood backdrop is well represented through Beatty’s visionary approach. If the guy knows one thing between this and “Dick Tracy”, it’s that he knows how to visually present a film, and I was overwhelmed in “Tree of Life” cinematographer Caleb Deschanel’s artistic touch that always keeps the imagery flowing beautifully. His lively touches for the California backdrop during the big boom era is evident, and Caleb at least increases our imagination positively for this story even if the other presentations don’t always reach that similar height.

Beatty makes films by his own rules, but that isn’t always the best case scenario. “Rules Don’t Apply” is a wasted opportunity at a comeback story not only for Warren, but for Hughes as well. It’s an overburdened and overly-ambitious biopic that cuts corners on nearly every ideal aspect, disappointing the audience in presenting something refreshing for the Hollywood biz-flick that has been told one too many times.

3/10