Movie Review: Bad Times at the El Royale
Bad Times at the El Royale is the new tarentinoesque (congrats on the new word!) thriller from director Drew Goddard, whose previous credits include a couple of episodes of The Good Place, and The Cabin in the Woods…I haven’t seen either of those, but I’ve heard good things about Cabin and critics seem to like The Good Place, so good for him. Bad Times stars Jeff Bridges, who apparently can no longer afford razors to shave with, Cynthia Erivo (with a perfect American accent from this Brit and an amazing voice-she played Celie in the stage version of The Color Purple, one of my all time favorites), Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Hemsworth’s abs. I say tarentinoesque, but it’s really tarantino-ish…very ish. Seven people check into the otherwise deserted hotel, they all have secrets, and back stories, and their stories are told as they interconnect over the course of the night.
Some movies suffer from a lack of proper editing, going on and on, adding scenes that don’t matter or just distract from the story, this movie suffers from too much editing. It’s also two hours and twenty minutes long, which I realize sounds like a contradiction, but that’s what the problem is. This shouldn’t have been a movie, it should have been a mini series, ala American Horror Story. The acting is good, the dialog is good, and the story is interesting, it’s just too thin for so many people. We get introduced to the characters and we learn the how they ended up where they are, but never the why. I wanted more, and I was never going to get it in this limited time span. I imagine this being a ten episode series, with the first episode setting the story up, and then each subsequent episode telling the stories of each of the characters in more detail, as we see how they end up intertwining though the night. There is a big showdown at the end of the movie with Chris Hemsworth (playing the sexiest cult leader to ever exist), his abs, and some of his groupies that just doesn’t feel natural because we don’t get enough back story.
Who will live? Who will die? Does anybody care? Not really. The highlights of the film are Cynthia Erivo’s voice (the director took EVERY opportunity to get her to sing that he could-which is okay, because she has a great voice, but it may have been a little too much. There is a scene where she is singing in her room and clapping to the tempo, just so she can cover up the noise of Jeff Bridges (and his beard) tearing up the floor in her room. She is making this noise because, somehow, she knows there is a woman with a gun standing on the other side of the two way mirrors all the rooms have installed. We never find out how she knows the woman with the gun is there, but she does…and the clapping and singing work! Good for them!), and Chris Hemsworth’s abs, which are mesmerizing, hypnotic, in the way he moves them. His abs alone deserve a special award.
The movie is well made and well acted. The dialog is good and the sets are cool-I have a soft spot for retro 60’s design and the lounge is really cool looking. Unfortunately, it was all too thin…and we get cheated out of seeing a naked Chris Hemsworth on a beach because of back lighting…come on, Drew, really? If you’re curious, rent the film, you won’t get anything extra out of seeing it in a theater, and maybe the DVD/Blu Ray will have some interesting extras that go deeper into the characters backgrounds. Who knows, maybe in ten years it WILL get remade as a miniseries. I’d look forward to that…just don’t recast Chris Hemsworth…or his abs.