THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL RATING: 5 /10 --> Not a good movie
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Australian Mel Gibson has a small but important role in this picture shot by German director Wim Wenders, from a story by the lead singer of the Irish band U2, starring Mila Jovovich, the Ukrainian-born actress who was married French director Luc Besson for about a year, and American Jeremy Davies. And as much as you may think that those people are diverse...you ain't seen nothing yet!
PLOT: A billionaire media mogul's son is purported to have killed himself by jumping off the roof of the Million Dollar Hotel, a downtrodden shelter which houses insane people abandoned by the health care system. The kid's father sends a FBI agent in to find the killer of his son, not willing to accept that his son would ever commit suicide.
CRITIQUE: This was a difficult movie to rate. If I had to rate it on its story alone, I would give it a 3/10. It starts off as an interesting murder mystery but slowly disintegrates into an uninteresting melange of TWIN PEAKS meeting the good folks from the CUCKOO'S NEST, and ultimately falls flat in most categories except that of arty pretension. If I were to rate the soundtrack of this film, I would give it a 9/10. The music and sounds filled in this picture seem perfect for its environment of symbolic poetic chaos, and even manage to liven things up during the film's many dull moments. Now if I were to rate this movie on its acting alone, I would have no problem in handing it a 7/10, with Mel Gibson pulling off one of his weirdest, coolest and best roles ever. I wish they had made a movie about his one very peculiar FBI agent alone. The guy is as crazy or even crazier than all the real loonies in the building, and Gibson obviously made the most of his unfamiliar secondary role. Jeremy Davies also played a perfect nutjob, although I am starting to get a little tired of seeing Jovovich always playing her weirdo roles...I think a "normal" role for her would be "different" at this point. Peter Stormare is also unrecognizable and brilliantly funny as the insane man who talks with a Liverpool accent and truly believes that he wrote all of the Beatles' songs.
The rest of the cast is not as brilliant or original, with many of them just rounding out the cast for kicks sakes. Of course, as a black dramatic comedy, which I am assuming it is, the film did manage a few decent one-liners, but ultimately it is the so-called drama that was just too boring, existential and long-winded. The film also outstayed its welcome by about half and hour, and ultimately solved the mystery of the murder, only to leave me feeling emptier and less inclined to care than when I came in. Is this movie about egos, love and suicide, or is it just a convoluted script made to look like it's about those very subjects when really it's about a bunch of crazy people acting nuts and talking shit for over two hours? For me, it was more of the latter, and when you consider that the story is generally the most important part of a movie, I can't truly recommend this film to anyone out in the common audience. Of course, if you love U2, want to see Mel Gibson in a great, gritty, indie role or enjoy neat camera tricks every now and again, well, by all means, check into the hotel. For everyone else who doesn't really appreciate art-house fare, don't really like stories that pretend to go somewhere but ultimately end up going nowhere, and have just about had enough of movies featuring the insane passing off as "interesting eccentrics", well, buy the soundtrack and save yourself the grief.
Pay me a million bucks and I wouldn't see this movie again...okay, okay, I'm just kidding, but you get my drift.
Little Known Facts about this film and its stars: Jeremy Davies birth name was Jeremy Boring. Wow. I wonder why he changed it? He was born in Iowa. This movie is based on a story by the lead singer of the Irish band U2, Bono, and Nicholas Klein, the same man behind the screenplay of this movie. The film was originally titled THE BILLION DOLLAR HOTEL and based on a real-life L.A. hotel called "The Rosalyn Million Dollar Hotel" which was one of the great hotels during the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 30s, but which now stands as a halfway house where a lot of outpatients from mental hospitals live. Needless to say, good ol' Boner (pronounced Bono) himself makes a two-second cameo appearance in this flick as a dude with sunglasses in the lobby. Tim Roth also has an uncredited cameo role in this movie which lasts a little less than a minute. Actor Sean Penn was originally cast as the lead in this picture, a role which eventually went to Jeremy Davies. Some of you might recognize one of the loonies in this film as none other than Ellen Cleghorne from TV's "Saturday Night Live" (1991-1995). This movie won director Wim Wenders a Silver Berlin Bear Jury Prize for directing at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. This film was produced by Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's production company, the same people behind PAYBACK and BRAVEHEART.
Review Date: February 25, 2000 Director: Wim Wenders Writer: Nicholas Klein Producers: Bono, Bruce Davey, Wim Wenders, Nicholas Klein and Deepak Nayar Actors: Jeremy Davies as Tom Tom Milla Jovovich as Eloise Mel Gibson as Skinner Genre: Drama Year of Release: 2000 ------------------------------------- JoBlo's Movie Emporium http://www.joblo.com/ ------------------------------------- (c) 2000 Berge Garabedian
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