Beatty returns with ‘Rules Don’t Apply’
Print Edition
WARREN Beatty doesn’t want us to regard “Rules Don’t Apply,” in which he stars as Howard Hughes, as a Howard Hughes film. It’s actually a movie about late ’50s Hollywood, he says, and the sexual puritanism of the era.
Indeed, Beatty doesn’t appear for a long while in this much-awaited film, which he co-wrote, directed and starred in — perhaps partly to prove his point that he’s not the main attraction. But come on — it’s Warren Beatty, a legend who hasn’t made a film for 15 years, playing America’s most famous eccentric, controversial billionaire until ... well, until you know who. Of COURSE it’s a Howard Hughes movie.
And that’s not a bad thing, because whatever you think of the new film, Beatty at 79 retains much of that youthful charisma — he may have wrinkles, but the features are still boyish.
As for “Rules Don’t Apply,” it’s many years — decades, actually — in the making, brings together a who’s who list of on-and-offscreen talent, looks gorgeous — and still feels strangely uneven and tonally confusing. But if you can get over that, it’s undeniably entertaining and at times, even quirkily mesmerizing.
It’s Hollywood in 1958 — just three years before Beatty himself made his mark — and aspiring starlets are descending on the town, among them fresh-faced Baptist beauty queen Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins, a gorgeous Natalie Wood lookalike). She’s been invited by the reclusive Hughes to audition for his RKO Pictures.
Once there, she realizes she’s just one of many aspiring starlets Hughes has brought in on contract. But when her mother (the always-superb Annette Bening, being directed by her husband for the first time) gets the willies and suggests they leave, Marla insists on staying.
Marla’s handsome driver is aspiring real-estate developer Frank Forbes (the appealingly earnest Alden Ehrenreich, soon to be the next Han Solo). When Marla complains she hasn’t yet met Hughes, Frank admits he hasn’t met their employer, either.
Suddenly, Marla’s ushered into a darkened hotel bungalow and served a TV dinner in tinfoil. Hughes appears, befuddled and amusing. He asks her name, plays some saxophone, barks into the phone to his subordinates. These include Matthew Broderick (having lots of fun as Hughes’ chief driver), Candice Bergen as a personal assistant, and Martin Sheen as Hughes’ CEO.
The young couple has obvious chemistry. Frank, a Methodist and a virgin like Marla, is engaged to his hometown sweetheart. And Hughes has declared that drivers hitting on actresses will be fired.
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