Review: Beatty as eccentric billionaire — not THAT one
[...] 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.
[...] 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 — that's made him a Hollywood fixture for more than a half-century, from "Splendor in the Grass" to "Bonnie and Clyde" to "Shampoo" to "Heaven Can Wait" to "Reds."
Marla's handsome driver is aspiring real-estate developer Frank Forbes (the appealingly earnest Alden Ehrenreich, soon to be the next Han Solo).
Suddenly, Marla's ushered into a darkened hotel bungalow and served a TV dinner in tinfoil.
The Marla-Frank plotline competes with Hughes' increasingly erratic episodes — taking the cockpit for a terrifying ride while singing at the top of his lungs, or ordering truckfuls of Baskin-Robbins' Banana Nut ice cream, and then declaring: No More Banana NUT!
Beautiful to look at, never less than engaging, sometimes inspired and sometimes just odd, the film shifts uneasily in tone.
Rules Don't Apply," a 20th Century Fox release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America "for sexual material including brief strong language, thematic elements, and drug references.