THIS FILM IS IN
LIMITED RELEASE, THANK GOD. Oh, Mike Figgis, where
hath thou talent gone? Well, the talent is there, I
suppose. I have to give him credit for always
wanting to try something new, but even he can get a
little too weird on occasion, and "Hotel" is the
perfect example of an extra stellar cast, an interesting
premise, and a horrible result. This one was worse
than his "Cold Creek Manor" a couple of weeks
ago, and I absolutely loathed that picture with every
fiber of my being.
"Hotel" is story upon story -- three stories
intermingling at the same time, one on top of the other,
even some inside of other stories. It is sometimes
confusing, sometimes bewildering, but all the while
fascinating that any man could ever dream up such an odd
way of shooting a film. He does not succeed,
however, because he is too focused on uniqueness behind
the camera and with the editing, and less on character
development, story development, and all of those
essentials needed to make a film work. By the end,
we find ourselves wondering if anything really happened.
Did it? I am still uncertain.
This film has everything from documentary filmmakers to
cannibal vampires, I kid you not, and they just don't mesh
together. You might wonder why I am skirting around
revealing any of the plot. Well, you would have to
see it to believe it and, like his previous film "Timecode",
it would be too in-depth a review and would take me hours
to write. Just take my word that this is the most
unusual film of the year (though it was actually finished
in 2001) and, also, one of the most wretched.
Alas, I cannot give it zero pops because of the cast.
This overly talented cast takes horrible material and
mishmash filmmaking and manages to at least keep most of
us from walking out halfway through. And, that cast
is: Rhys Ifans, Salma Hayek, David Schwimmer,
Saffron Burrows, Valerie Golino, Jason Isaacs, Lucy Lui,
Julian Sands, John Malkovich, and Burt Reynolds.
And, they all do a fine job with what they are given, I
assure you; even Reynolds, whose character seems to have
no purpose whatsoever in the film, other that to take up
some more screen time.
"Hotel" is a jumbled mess of a picture that
might give another filmmaker inspiration to make a
masterpiece. However, this is anything but a
masterpiece -- a failed attempt to start a new wave of
filmmaking, and another bad film on the resume of a
director who, up until this year, had barely a blemish.
Come back, Mike Figgis. Leave the experimental stuff
behind you. Go back to "Leaving Las
Vegas". We miss that. We need that.
We don't need "Hotel" -- in fact, I think
everyone has checked out.
