Tossed Salad

I just wasted two perfectly good hours of my life watching watching “Hotel.” The film, by Mike Figgis (”Timecode” and “Leaving Las Vegas”), is the single most convoluted piece of crap attempting to masquerade itself as pretentious and arty that I have seen in years.

The film’s multiple mini-plots, including a film crew, a modernized filming of “The Dutchess of Malfi,” and a hotel run by cannibals who pray upon the guests, never really go anywhere. That could be due to the fact that the majority of the film involved the actors improvisation of their lines… Now improvisation is wonderful, for skits and the like, but when you’re attempting a feature length film with so many sub-plots it sort of works against you. Most anything I managed to understand was only from reading about 12 different synopsis (synopsi, or whatever the plural may be… I’ve never had to refernce twelve of them) Judging from the variations between the summaries I would say that they, like myself, had no clue what in the hell was going on.

Long durations of split and double split screens served only to further confuse the viewer, for instance… Are the cannibals vampires? Is that why their eyes glow? Did the producer order the hit on the director? If so, why does he then give himself to the hitman / cannibal? How does the director come out of his coma? Does it have anything to do with the maid mounting him? I have no clue. The critics have no clue. Hell, Figgis himself probably had no clue.

“Hotel” stands as proof that a movie cannot be judged by its back cover… The front cover proclaims it “Clever, Funny, Erotic!” or some schlep at the New York Post did anyway… I suppose it is if by funny he meant odd, clever he meant you won’t get it, and erotic he meant you see tits, bush, and cock for thirty seconds… So don’t judge it by its front cover either.

In summary, “Hotel” sucked. All of the A-list actors it garnered should have run for cover, and the only showings it should receive ought to be in film school “What NOT to Do” classes. If you want to spend two hours doing something fun, why not tryout the cool interactive animation I linked to in this post?