A great cast and superb performances, make this film a great treat for acting.A film on Orson Welles the great himself is bound to be something interesting. Now, this film treats Orson in a way that we dare to have known him. The film is based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name. And here, our Orson is a psychopath who is hell bent on deriving what he needs from anyone. He uses everyone and to us them , he goes to any extent. Wow, what an acting by Christian McKay as Orson Welles. McKay breathes life into a great character and makes it his own by a stellar performance. Zac Efron, the blue eyed boy plays Richard who is finds his real self, and learns that if he believes in something, he can do it. Now, the writing and screenplay are do well here. And most of all, the art direction is superb, it's clean with hardly any showiness, that is I mean, here the world seems real like the one in 1937. Look at the zooming out final shot from the steps, where we see that it's so very fine and good looking from above. Wish to be at such places in such an era where life was slow paced and more lovely than now. Richard Linklater has given us different kind of movie, from Dazed and Confused to now, and he simply continues to surprise us with this one too. Since I have seen it for first time, I was amused by the ending, coz it simply stops with nothing much happening. Richard has found the True Orson and it end there, no more taking it forward. Yeah, if this had to be the ending, I wish it was more cut down and less in time. As the title line says, "All is fair in Love and Theatre", I say, all is fair for Orson and for his theatre. He is devilishly passionate about his work. He is extremely shrewd and exquisitely specific about everything he does, here he does a play Julius Caesar. He demands respect and he never forgets to ask that either. A complete narcissist you see at times, who loves himself and his job, and yes even a secretary at times. Now, editing would have been more crispier and had the subject been more focused on the objectivity of Orson rather than on how Richard was being treated, this would have been a finer film. Having said that, I like how Richard Linklater and I give it a 4/5 rating. It's kind of a coming of new age feel good film that is set in 1930's,Though it's for you to decide, do see it please for Chrsitian McKay's performance alone.

During the viewing of this sweet nostalgic look at backstage life, I wondered how anybody came up with the funding for it! Nobody gets thrown out of a window, no cars explode, there are no scenes of bloody carnage, and there's not even one cute dog. But there is a romanticized slice of honest Americana, a look back at the theatre rehearsals that lead up to a revolutionary production of Julius Caesar, one directed by the 22 year old Orson Welles; framing the tale is also a coming-of-age romance between young Zac Efron and one of two young women he meets as he is hired by Welles to play a bit part in the play--for those with some knowledge of the Mercury Theatre, its fascinating to see a spot-on impersonation of young Joseph Cotten played by Joseph Tupper, but the entire joy of the film is meeting Orson himself in the person of Christian McKay, who seems imbued with the spirit of the man in an uncanny revelatory performance, worth all 107 minutes of the film. This is a film for folks interested in theatre or the cinema, and will doubtless be lost on those in search of realistic action adventures--there's just a hint of early Woody Allen in the film, too--and my hope is that someone is already looking for a another, more complex look at the Boy Genius starring McKay.

when i first heard of the movie i didn't give it much attention first because i thought it's a Zac Efron movie and second bc i didn't know what the hick it's about but tonight when i was scrolling down the channels i noticed a movie about the 30s which am crazily fond of and boom her is zac who i thought was the least talented actor in America but i had nothing to do so i gave it a shot and thank god i did because this film is one of the best films I've ever seen and zac really surprised me with his acting which was serious and impressive and he also made me laugh with some of his well delivered lines.on the other hand, who really impressed me in this was the actor playing orson welles i don't know his name and I've never seen him in a movie before but he made me feel like he's the most famous actor in the world. of course the other cast members are astonishing even the small roles are noticeable which proves what a great director linklater must be.the music, the costumes, the color of the movie, the dialogue, all in all the movie made my day and it deserved more credit. i promise you won't full a sleep watching it

Richard Linklater's film of Robert Kaplow's novel merits a watch, if only for Christian McKay's splendid evocation of the young Orson Welles. McKay has the vocal chops, the look (in profile it's uncanny) and, most importantly, the attitude. Without apparent effort, he catches the mammoth self-confidence that made Welles one of the most intimidating screen presences in cinema. I have no idea how much time and effort this actor (in his first feature film) spent in mastering the smirk Welles gives when neophyte actor Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) talks of his "lover"; in any case the work pays off. It's like a cameo by Harry Lime.This movie uses the Mercury Theatre's celebrated production of Julius Caesar as backdrop to its rather slight story. The screenplay tells us that Welles, whatever genius he possessed, may not have been a great guy-- and, well... are we wrong to ask how much that matters? Efron, as the young hopeful who falls into Welles's considerable gravitational pull, has a certain charm and potential talent, but looks and acts somehow utterly of his own time-- we never believe him as a 1930s construct. (Possibly he hasn't watched enough old movies.) He falls in love with Claire Danes, who plays an ambitious... something, I missed exactly what her job was. Script girl? Dramaturge? Anyway, she works on the play. Danes does a decent job as whatever she is, but she and Efron generate zero chemistry. "Why am I so interested in you?" she asks at one point. I had no guesses.If I had to speculate, I'd say that the romantic plot did not grab the director much. He does good work casting the real-life characters. Eddie Marsan makes a credible John Houseman; Ben Chaplin registers strongly as a nerve-racked George Coulouris; and James Tupper looks, sounds, and feels right as the affable young ladies' man Joe Cotten. The backstage squabbles, trivial though they may be, draw more interest than the emotional business upfront. And Linklater truly comes awake as a director in capturing performance: whether he's staging a quick radio sequence in which Welles steals the show or very finely recreating the Mercury's legendary Caesar, you get the feeling Linklater would be happiest just sitting back and watching the show. And here the movie is at its best-- far more than Tim Robbins' earnest, turgid Cradle Will Rock, this movie, absent of politics, captures the excitement of truly revolutionary theater at a time when such a thing was still possible.In fact, that lack of earnestness may be the key here. Caesar was a great production not because it deconstructed Hitler, but because Welles gave it a sense of importance strong enough to deconstruct anything. Welles was a great artist, and perhaps more crucially he was a great bulls--t artist. Let's put it more simply: that WAS his art. This is a film about learning to bulls--t, learning when not to say what you mean, learning when not to be honest-- and that's bracing. It reminds us that trickery, deception and narcissism can be magic, and that egotism with a will to dazzle us can be more dazzling than anything we describe as "talent" and "sincerity". It's why the movie stalls when McKay is not on screen-- he convinces us he IS Orson Welles, that he is the most important man in the world-- and in defiance of logic and perspective, we buy it. And at the end of the day, that transparent and fantastic lie-- that's art.