Is 'Bad Times At The El Royale' Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Have To Say
A LITTLE TARANTINO, A SPLASH OF SARTRE...
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A hotel straddling the California-Nevada border. A bunch of secretive strangers. Chris Hemsworth, as a sexy cult-leader. Drew Goddard's ("The Cabin In The Woods") new movie has all this and more, but is it worth 140 minutes of your time? Here's what the reviews have to say:

Saying More Than 'A Bunch Of Shifty Strangers Show Up At A Hotel' Would Spoil Its Themes And Reveals

Once the hottest spot in Lake Tahoe, the El Royale is now a crumbling dump where a room costs $8 a night, but customers often rent by the hour. There's only one employee left: A scrawny, nervous junkie named Miles (Lewis Pullman) who works as the concierge, the bartender, and whatever else.

[IndieWire]

Taking direct cues from Agatha Christie, Goddard assembles a group of strangers at this slightly haunted (not in the literal sense) hotel, on a rainy night in 1969, and sends them warily bouncing off of one another, each slippery with a secret they're powerless to keep. Jon Hamm plays a Southern-drawlin' traveling vacuum salesman who is probably not really a vacuum salesman. Jeff Bridges is a shifty priest whose motives, shrouded as they're supposed to be, are pretty clear from the get-go. Dakota Johnson's misanthropic hippie is obviously up to something. And Cynthia Erivo's struggling-to-get-by nightclub singer is . . . well, actually, she's just a nightclub singer.

[Vanity Fair]

Be Warned — This Is A Long, Somewhat Ponderous Film

At one point, the storytelling turns nonlinear, with the same moments shown a bunch of different ways, and it's not clear it adds much to what the film is trying to say. The same goes for flashbacks that fill in backstory for some of the characters — you can see how both techniques might make parsing the plot a little easier, but in spelling out the details, the movie loses some of its allusive punch.

[Vox]

​When it's good, it's very, very good — and when it's bad, this retro whatsit is a whole lot of awful. Punishingly long at 2 hours and 21 minutes, the movie is still crammed with enough depraved delights to make you consider checking in.

[Rolling Stone]

The Supporting Cast Is Full Of Fun, Familiar Faces (And Hemsworth's Abs) But They Don't Get Much Depth

The film only becomes more fun as you get hip to what it's doing, with Goddard's big cast continuing to balloon over the course of this 140-minute epic. Chris Hemsworth as a shredded, dancing, Charles Manson-esque cult figure who triple underlines the Tarantino connection? Sure. Xavier Dolan as an evil British music executive? Why not. "The Good Place" star Manny Jacinto as a henchman without any lines of dialogue? Okay.

[IndieWire]

Although the film is stuffed with quotable quips, some of the minor characters, particularly Emily's younger sister, Ruth (Cailee Spaeny)—a brainwashed member of a Manson-esque cult run by the sexy, dangerous Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth)—exhibit behavior that doesn't make a lot of sense, and more importantly, undermines the emotional resonance of their arcs. In The Cabin In The Woods, having characters who were more walking plot contrivances than fully realized human beings was an asset, given the nature of the story. Here, in a film that asks its audience to spend extended amounts of time with these folks and care about them as individuals, it's a liability.

[The A.V. Club]


In This Era Of Remakes And Franchise Films, A Star-Studded Oddball Like This Is Certainly Refreshing

Bad Times at the El Royale feels like a deeply weird and wondrous accomplishment, especially coming from a risk-averse major movie studio like 20th Century Fox. It taps into something that cinema and TV have been obsessed with for decades: how we can be saved, who saves us, and what we need saving from. And when it works, it's a good time indeed.

[Vox]

Truth be told, I don't much mind the version of "Bad Times at the El Royale" we have before us. Even if, with its multi-chapter narrative and time-skipping plotlines, its mix of verbal longwindedness and abrupt violence, the movie initially seems to warn of a terminal case of Tarantino-itis: an El Royale with cheese.

[The LA Times]


The Possibilities You Build Up In Your Head Might Eclipse What The Movie's Story Actually Delivers On

I really wanted it to be one thing, and when I discovered it wasn't that thing, about halfway through, it was too late to re-align my expectations. Perhaps I'll watch it again sometime, on a rainy spring Saturday at home, and then I'll see all the errors of my initial assessment. (Hey, it happens.) That, or another go-around will only deepen my sense that what's wrong with the film is perversely what makes its trailer so good: it works better as a kicky scenario, a cool hypothetical, than as a fleshed-out, two-hour-and-20-minute film.

[Vanity Fair]

All of this is less intricately plotted than it pretends to be, and certainly less involving than it wants to be, however ominous the chords of Michael Giacchino's score.

[The Hollywood Reporter]


Out Of The Whole Motley Crew, Cynthia Erivo's Performance As Darlene Is The One That'll Stick With You

The standout is Erivo, who will next be seen in Steve McQueen's thriller "Widows" and whose performance here is revelatory in the most rewarding sense. Watch how carefully and patiently Goddard frames her face as she stares into a mirror, or breaks down crying and praying as a storm rages outside her window, and you'll feel something remarkable: a filmmaker falling in love with an actor, wholly and unreservedly, in a way that encourages the audience to follow suit.

[The LA Times]

Erivo, in her big-screen debut (with Widows soon to follow), is a marvel of stillness, whether she's singing or staring down the latest in a long line of entitled men.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

Darlene sings, beautifully, several times, and one sequence uses Erivo's mighty vocal power to really clever, suspenseful effect. Otherwise, though, the singing is more an agent of style than of substance, which positions the lone black woman in the film as the plaintive score to a host of more thoroughly rendered white characters' misdeeds. Those are some tricky optics to calibrate, and Bad Times doesn't maneuver them well.

[Vanity Fair]

TL;DR

With the clever, patient, and almost genuinely moving "Bad Times at the El Royale," [Goddard] vivisects post-Tarantino crime sagas in order to explore how these stories allow us to look through the heavy veil of morality that tends to fall over our eyes in the clear light of day.

[IndieWire]


Watch The Trailer

 


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