new to DVD: Rules Don't Apply

Film critics love to describe Warren Beatty as a maverick, and so it's perhaps inevitable that Beatty would eventually make a movie based on the idea of, and even called, Rules Don't Apply. The title ostensibly refers to the three main characters, but behind the scenes. . . yeah, it applies to Beatty himself.

The first act of the film stars Alden Ehrenreich as Frank Forbes and Lily Collins as Marla Mabrey. They're both naive, young, and new employees of Hollywood executive Howard Hughes. Frank works as one of several limo drivers employed by Mr. Hughes, but like most of his colleagues, he's never actually met the man; rather than drive for Mr. Hughes directly, the limo drivers are usually assigned to drive around Hughes's starlets. And boy does he have a lot of starlets.

I know that Rules Don't Apply is a deliberate, unapologetic mixture of fact and fiction, so I don't know if this part is true, but in the movie, Hughes has a tendency to hire would-be actresses based on nothing more than head-shots and resumes. Whereas every other Hollywood exec made his hiring decisions based on screen tests, Hughes hired the women first, showered them with luxurious gifts as if they were major stars -- by the count of one supporting character, he'd bought and given houses to no less than 26 unknown, untried actresses -- and occasionally gets around to giving these young women screen tests to see if they might actually be of any use in a movie. It goes mostly unsaid that this was Hughes's eccentric, extravagant way of basically buying sex from these women. He would never debase either himself or the women enough to actually give them cash in exchange for sexual favors, but the movie strongly, strongly implies that by the time he actually meets the women, they're so grateful for his generosity and impressed by his wealth that they sleep with him at the drop of a hat.

Marla Mabrey is one of those women, or at least that's Hughes's plan. She moves into her new house with her domineering but well-meaning mother (Annette Bening), and as the two women wait in vain for some sign that Hughes has the slightest interest in Marla's career -- for weeks on end, they don't receive any word from Hughes at all -- Mr. Hughes patiently waits, from afar, for the mother to get fed up and leave.

In the meantime, Frank and Marla fall in love, although this is a love based very much on a bond of friendship. These early scenes, in which Hughes is talked about a great deal but doesn't appear, lack the standard cliches and story beats of Hollywood romance, but are extraordinarily dull. I think the Annette Bening character is supposed to be a sort of comic relief, but it doesn't really work.

Most movies that are sometimes good and sometimes not start out well and gradually get worse, and there's a reason for that: the filmmakers care a great deal about grabbing your attention, and once they have it, they know that you've invested your time. They can then coast on cliche, knowing that you probably won't walk away from the movie even if it gets boring, as your curiosity will demand that you stick with it just to see how it ends.

Rules Don't Apply, true to its title, is the reverse of that. Its first act is extraordinarily boring, but just when you start to worry if the whole movie's going to be like that, Hughes finally makes an entrance, takes over as the lead character, and dramatically shifts the tone from romantic melodrama minus the romance and melodrama -- yes, that's what I said -- and suddenly becomes a hilarious comedy of manners. The change of tone is very welcome, but very swift, starting with the funniest scene in the film, Oliver Platt's cameo as a banker who has flown in from out of town specifically for a meeting with Hughes -- and who then becomes increasingly frustrated as Hughes not only refuses to meet with him, but won't even provide a straight answer as to why.

There's a reason why so many movies are made about Howard Hughes. He was an aviation pioneer, a billionaire, an eccentric, a Hollywood producer, and an inventor, whose eccentricity gradually became outright insanity. Any one of those aspects of his life would be ripe for cinematic exploration. Rules Don't Apply explores all of those aspects, maybe not as thoroughly as, for example, John Logan and Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a film that is arguably superior, and inarguably very different in agenda and tone. The Aviator is a more or less factual biopic of Hughes himself, while Rules Don't Apply utilizes the real-life figure of Hughes in a fictional romantic triangle with Frank and Marla.

Both men have their pros and cons. Frank is a sincerely nice guy (and thus, as anyone knows, doomed to at least temporarily lose out in any romantic rivalry), but he's also engaged to his childhood sweet-heart -- although, tellingly, the engagement seems to be one of those that drags on for years without any plans for setting a wedding date.

Hughes is charming, single, and wealthy, but the fact that he's old enough to be Marla's father is pointedly underlined by the fact that her mother is played by Annette Bening, and Hughes himself is played by Bening's real-life husband, Warren Beatty. Hughes's eccentricity is presented as both a pro and a con: Initially, it makes him intriguing and mysterious, but as the eccentricity slides into chaos and dysfunction, it becomes increasingly clear that maybe he's not the better choice.

The story of the love triangle may be fictional, but it expertly incorporates episodes from Hughes's real life. More importantly, Rules Don't Apply walks a delicate path, presenting the eccentric Hughes as an unquestionably comical character, but never going so far as to seem like it's ridiculing the real man. You get the inescapable feeling that despite all of the wackiness in Hughes's life and personality, Beatty and his co-writer, Bo Goldman, respect the man and his legacy.

The supporting cast deserves mention. Matthew Broderick plays Frank's supervisor, Levar Mathis. Broderick may be a versatile actor to an extent, but his default setting tends to naturally convey boyish innocence, and so his role as the crude, lustful Levar seems all wrong. However, as we get to know the character beyond these surface characteristics, the role gradually starts to feel like a better fit. Still, I question the wisdom of casting him in the role; wouldn't it be better to cast someone who could sell the character's surface qualities, and then reveal inner depth, rather than cast someone who for a long time seems wrong and eventually earns a "now I get it" moment from the audience?

Oliver Platt plays Forester, and I know I already mentioned him, but I mention him again only because his brilliant comic delivery deserves a great deal of the credit for the movie's best scene. Kudos also go to Alec Baldwin in a small recurring role as a Howard Hughes employee who, like Platt's Mr. Forester, gets increasingly frustrated with Hughes's refusal to indulge even the most basic, most reasonable requests. And even Broderick, despite his initial miscasting, gets one of the best scenes, toward the end of the film, in a very, very funny scene that I won't describe, lest I spoil the humor.

But despite the fact that he doesn't show up until the movie's almost a third of the way over, this is really Beatty's movie. Once he does finally show up, his character dominates the movie, his presence felt even in the few remaining scenes he's not in. In a way, this movie is really about Frank and Marla trying to maintain their own identities despite the fact that their whole world seems to revolve around the towering figure of Howard Hughes.

Do I recommend the movie? Yes, I do. The opening act could have been livelier, but I respect the writers' refusal to indulge in romantic-movie cliches, and it's worth getting through just to get to Beatty, Platt, Baldwin, and all of the fun chaos that surrounds their scenes. Of course, normally, I wouldn't recommend a movie I liked only two thirds of, but then again, we're talking about Howard Hughes and Warren Beatty. The rules don't apply.