Rules Don't Apply (2016)

RULES DON'T APPLY  (2016)  ¢ ¢
    D: Warren Beatty
    Warren Beatty, Alden Ehrenreich, Lily Collins,
    Matthew Broderick, Candice Bergen, Martin Sheen,
    Hart Bochner, Paul Sorvino, Annette Bening,
    Oliver Platt, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan
It took decades for Warren Beatty to get his Howard Hughes movie made, and here it finally is, with Beatty as the famously eccentric billionaire. It's nice to look at (Caleb Deschanel did the cinematography) and a lot of famous faces turn up in fairly small roles, but the script is devoid of surprises and the picture never really comes to life. Beatty doesn't even make Hughes all that interesting, and Hughes was one of the 20th century's preeminent oddballs. It plays like a long, slow movie from another time, and you keep waiting for something to happen that could keep you from glancing at your watch, but it doesn't. It just goes on, and on, and on. Beatty's co-writer, Bo Goldman, wrote the screenplay for "Melvin and Howard", a 1980 movie (and a better one) in which Jason Robards played Hughes.