Yes, it's a textbook example of a "What in the hell did I just watch?" movie......comprised of many brilliant bits and pieces that never coalesce into an actual compelling movie.....
Sad, because Beatty's legendary reputation as a meticulous, painstaking micro-manager of a director dilutes his movie instead of empowering it.
It's a beautifully rendered nostalgic trip through late 1950's, early 1960's Hollywood......and nobody knows that era or personifies it as well as Beatty. But it's also a shapeless, wandering tour through the director's memories......maddeningly, it never quite comes into focus.
In structure, the storyline vaguely reminded us of the more standard, boilerplate romantic comedy "I.Q" (1994) in which Albert Einstein (a puckish Walter Matthau) meddles in the love lives of Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins.....
Beatty's darker take on this material has a pair of naive, virginal young lovers (Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich) caught up in the orbit of Howard Hughes.......whose well documented mania Beatty portrays alternately for pathos or laughs, depending on the scene involved.
It's clear that Beatty lavished much time and attention on the individual sequences but failed to make any effort to shape it all into a strong narrative. And maybe that was his intention......just as Beatty and Arthur Penn's groundbreaking "Bonnie And Clyde" was hailed as an American version of a French New Wave film, "Rules Don't Apply" defiantly defies categorization.....it simply exists in its vivid little individual scenes, wittily observing its characters without bothering to hold you with their stories.....
Worth watching? Sure. We wouldn't have missed it.....because Beatty attends to the craft of filmmaking like a watchmaker, and there's not many directors with that kind of patience. Just don't expect to be bowled over in any way.....2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2)
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