The Million Dollar Hotel

I read only negative critics about this movie and I don't confirm that. I found it very interesting. I was even often laughing where everybody in the cinema around me were silent!! I have to admit that I had big questions after watching it but this is usual for the most movies of Wim Wenders. Anyway he is the director from whom I watched the biggest number of movies. Some crazy people (in a way or another) live in the Million Dollar Hotel where everything took place. At the end I was asking myself whether they were crazy at all. I even felt that inhabitants of this hotel are an allegory on the whole crazy world! Or maybe they were sane and the others were insane!! There was certainly a critic about many aspects of the life in USA. It is for instance certainly not a coincidence that a personality in this happens to be a big Jewish media boss who manipulates the FBI and the Media in the way he wants!! Why was the FBI agent a half cripple? The were many other questions. One thing is sure, and that is that I was not bored at all. The photography was great as expected from W. Wenders. The music is also very nice and U2 (or Bono) put a lot of their (his) talent inside it. I surely should not forget the actors. They acted all very good and in a persuasive manner. Anyhow I expect that many people wouldn't like. It doesn't have the typical kind of stories that are generally common and beloved by the most of the public but it is right variety for me.

It's always difficult to know what to expect with Wenders: it's either great or really bad. And the interesting part of it is, it's the very same kind of features and the way he chooses to tell a story that will keep you interested or bore you. Although not exactly a boring film, the Million Dollar Hotel gets caught in its maker's defects. The problem starts with the story. Written by rock-star Bono, the story is something like a rock ballad trying to be a movie. Worse, it tries to be a sort of "alternative moral" tale. This tender love-story between two marginals in a hotel full of sympathetic lunatics is so full of rock cliches, it ends up being a huge cliche in itself.

You watch it, you want to like the plot but oh, again that thing about the weirdos being better people because they are so much more poetic and "innocent" than normal people. You want to like the characters but oh, again we're supposed to fall for a delicate, innocent child-saint-whore woman. You want to like the performance of the actors but after a while, can't help thinking "people, let's get on with it, shall we?". You even want to make the effort of agreeing with that lovely universal message in the end : life can be so beautiful, pity we realise it too late but oh, haven't you read that somewhere already? Chinese cookie, was it??...

The Million Dollar Hotel tries so hard to be deep, it ends up being shallow. It tries so hard to be rich in thoughts, it ends up being cheap and pompous. It tries so hard to criticise "mainstream values" and self-righteousness, it ends up being mainstream and self-righteous. And you try so hard to like it... you really do... that you end up thinking : oooh pleeaaaase!

Behind a kind of bad love story , really common ,there are some feelings , some behaviours you can't forget after having seen this movie , it looks as if everyone was fool , but, you manage minute after minute to understand them , and think like them ...don't watch it, as a ridiculous appearing love story ...

The Million Dollar Hotel is quite literally, one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen that features a two time oscar winner such as Mel Gibson. Gibson plays a beyond straight arrow of an FBI agent named Skinner, sent to investigate the mysterious suicide of a millionaire's son (an unbilled Tim Roth) in a seedy hotel that is host to a group of the poor mentally ill. Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies, eschewing Private Upham completely from "Saving Private Ryan), is a half wit delivery boy for the hotel with odd hair who's got a thing for a screw up (Milla Jovovich). Skinner performs a drastic investigation on the hotel who's inhabitants include the Fifth Beatle (a convincing Peter Stormare playing a good guy), an Indian (LA Law's Jimmy Smits!), an old lady (Gloria Stuart, far from her Titanic role), Harold, oops! I mean Bud Cort as a recurring alcoholic, a weirdo (Amanda Plummer, in another fine character role), and others. Definitely an eccentric film that is far from Hollywood. Gibson is quite, to describe it lightly, strange as an FBI agent not to be trifled with. His face alone is that of something that's out of a Stephen King novel. Jeremy Davies seems as if he's had way too many No Doz pills to fulfill the lead role, one that requires him to barely speak. Filled with small roles from recognizable character actors, this is a film that's for an acquired taste, because this is very out there for a movie.

This for sure one of those movies where you will "get it" or you won't. I liked The Million Dollar Hotel right from the first time I watched it and I did rewatch it a few times.

A rating of 5.9 (at the moment of writing my review) is of course a sad fact - if I compare that rating with all those top-ratings of 8+ for all those shallow, boring, at most mediocre and artless blockbusters Hollywood and companies like Marvel/DC mass publish in our days.

There is a chance you will enjoy The Million Dollar Hotel a lot - if you like sometimes an unusual dish served with some humor and melancholy - if not, well, I take any bet you wasted your time on far worse movies.