In 'Hail, Caesar!' Trailer, Ralph Fiennes vs. a Tongue Twister

There are shades of Singin’ in the Rain in the new trailer for the Coen Brothers comedy Hail, Caesar!, about behind-the-scenes hijinks at a film studio in the 1950s. Unlike the dance-filled montage of the previous trailer, this one zeros in on a scene between Ralph Fiennes (as a frustrated director) and Alden Ehrenreich (as a Western actor trying to break into more “serious” drama). Ehrenreich’s cowboy voice is a poor fit for his debonair character, and hilarity ensues as Fiennes attempts to coax an English accent out of him. Watch it above (and note the original Universal Films logo at the beginning, which was used through the mid-1930s).

Hail, Caesar! revolves around a fictionalized version of Golden Age studio exec Eddie Mannix (played by Josh Brolin), a “fixer” working with MGM’s PR department to bury potential scandals involving the studio’s stars, from on-set affairs to Communist leanings. Funny as it is, the new trailer keeps most of the film’s leading players in the background, including George Clooney (as a Charlton Heston-like leading man who gets caught in a kidnapping plot), Scarlett Johansson (as a synchronized-swimming starlet clearly based on Esther Williams), and Channing Tatum (playing a hoofer who resembles Gene Kelly). Hail, Caesar! arrives in theaters on February 5.