It's a sort of triptych of stories of Hollywood, this. A tale that starts off with all the excesses and hedonism of the cocaine fuelled, sexually lascivious antics where even an elephant isn't too much for a party hosted by a movie mogul. It's here we meet the three characters who provide the thread for the rest of this maelstrom of a movie. Firstly we have the young, naive, but quick-thinking "Manny" (Diego Calva) who manages to attract the attention of the much-married, established and former silent screen star "Jack Conrad" (Brad Pitt) all whilst Margot Robbie's ambitious and outrageous "Nellie LaRoy" is sniffing, snorting, dancing and generally sexifying everything she touches as she bids to get into the acting business. What now ensues is a really well crafted and thoughtfully entertaining tale of the rise and fall and rise and fall of these three characters and of how their success brings failure as surely as the sun comes up. Robbie is on excellent form, a truly convincing performance as a character ill-equipped for the journey she is so determined to undertake. Pitt, likewise, plays well here. His character has less in the way of shock factor to deliver, but that storyline offers us a rather more effectively stolid appreciation of just how fickle success can be: there, then gone - in what might seem like a blind of the eye. Finally, the aspirational but (initially) more measured, head-screwed-on Calva who falls in love, and ends up trying to fight the inevitable like King Canute! There's a quirky effort from Tobey Maguire, an alligator and a rat-eater; and a rather scene-stealing contribution - especially at the end - from Jean Smart's Hedda Hopper-style gossip journalist "Elinor St. John" - possibly the only honest character in the entire thing! It's a pastiche and/or an homage to all things cinema at a time of the gradual emergence and then dominance of sound pictures, and we are frequently exposed to the car-crash lifestyles as everyone adapted, re-adapted, and continued to stay on their toes as their industry and their audiences did not always want to take everyone with them - and at break neck speed too - as tastes changed. It's got everything from Cecil B DeMille to Baz Luhrmann to it, takes a swipe at the pompous-thinking stage theatricals (from the East Coast), the shallowness of the whole industry - and yet, it never loses a sense the these are still people. Human beings! It is not difficult to imagine Kenneth Anger advising on the script - it "could" all be true". Maybe a bit on the long side, it certainly sags now and again - but it's definitely a big screen experience that delivers solid, engaging performances that are not over reliant on - even, rather comically (and dangerously) illustrating just how films were made before - CGI! No point in waiting for this to come to television - it's a must for the cinema around which it's story is told.
