If you're tired of feeling numb, The Million Dollar Hotel is a great place to check into for a couple of hours.
The Million Dollar Hotel (2001)
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Reviews Counted:41
Fresh:10
Rotten:31
Average Rating:4.2/10
Consensus: Critics say the weirdness of The Million Dollar Hotel is more grating and pretentious than interesting. Also, it takes too long to get to the conclusion.
Theatrical Release:Feb 2, 2001 Limited
Synopsis: Wim Wenders's THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL is a well-filmed movie set in a majestic, dilapidated hotel on the outskirts of Hollywood. The opener shows Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies), the eccentric, slightly... Wim Wenders's THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL is a well-filmed movie set in a majestic, dilapidated hotel on the outskirts of Hollywood. The opener shows Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies), the eccentric, slightly retarded, skateboard-riding narrator, wandering in slow motion at daybreak on the roof of the hotel, as a hypnotic U2 song completes the moment. The film consists of many of these near-perfect fantasy capsules, strung together by a vague plot--that Agent Skinner (Mel Gibson), a clownish detective, is investigating the supposed murder of an artist named Izzy who was living at the hotel, and who is the son of a millionaire. What Skinner learns immediately is that most of the hotel's residents are, like Tom Tom, mentally disabled and basically harmless. Geronimo (Jimmy Smits) is one of the few hotel occupants who seems capable of committing such a crime, but even he is more entertaining than threatening. Through Skinner's observation of his subjects, viewers witness some delectably sweet events, such as the magical scene in which Tom Tom meets his true love, Eloise (Milla Jovovich), in the stairwell of the hotel. Both the actors and the sets of THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL facilitate stunning photography that looks as if it were ripped from the pages of Vogue. The script, based on an idea by Bono, and the score by U2, complete this fashionable picture. [More]
Starring: Mel Gibson, Milla Jovovich, Jeremy Davies, Jimmy Smits
Starring: Mel Gibson, Milla Jovovich, Jeremy Davies, Jimmy Smits, Bud Cort, Peter Stormare, Amanda Plummer, Gloria Stuart
Director: Wim Wenders
Director: Wim Wenders
Screenwriter: Nicholas Klein
Producer: Wim Wenders, Deepak Nayar, Bruce Davey, Bono, Nicholas Klein
Composer: Bono, Daniel Lanois
Studio: Icon Entertainment
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Reviews for The Million Dollar Hotel
Pretentious, indulgent, tiresome exercise in star-strutting and seediness.
Something of a monstrosity -- liquored self-indulgence taken to its own astral plane.
Doesn't live up to its name, nor to the promise of big-name stars like Gibson, Bono or Jovovich.
Pretentious and trite in a way that you can get away with in a rock song or a music video, but that becomes almost unbearably irritating in a full-length feature.
Too long, the willful eccentricity is grating and the hackneyed moral -- real life is better than TV -- is so silly it's best taken ironically.
If any of these characters were half as resonant as Wenders appears to think they are, the film might have seemed charming instead of merely stranded.
It is probably asking too much of this phantasmagoria that it make sense.
Even alternative cinema god, Wenders, and rock's last great savior, Bono, are doing little more than recycling the material and cardboard people that Hollywood machinery has assigned as the harmless, loveable freaks.
Ultimately falls flat in most categories except that of arty pretension.
Vacuous, tedious, pretentious and featuring some uniformly atrocious acting.
Listening to these people prattle on and watching the St. Vitus-Dance antics of Jeremy Davies in the role of Tom-Tom is an exericise in tedium.
Longtime Wenders fans will undoubtedly welcome the affront to conventional storytelling while others, attracted by the marquee value of Mel Gibson, are more likely to leave the theatre scratching their heads.
There may not be anyone else who is as capable of romanticizing bummed-out good taste as Mr. Wenders.
If you're looking for a defining Wenders image, try starting with the gloomy angels in overcoats in Wings Of Desire.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 44% 44% | Night at the Museum: B… |
| 32% 32% | Terminator Salvation |
| 36% 36% | Angels & Demons |
| 95% 95% | Star Trek |
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| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 88% 88% | Inglourious Basterds |
| 78% 78% | The Hangover |
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| 47% 47% | The Girl From Monaco |
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