Product: The Million Dollar Hotel (2000)
Rating: 3.0
Quirky movie with a first rate cast in a muddled story
This is a quirky movie with a first rate cast and a muddled story. This story like many of Wim Wenders tails is about the character interactions with each other in unusual circumstances. You could not ask for a better selection of odd balls to be in one movie, all of which were acted to perfection. It's the story that holds the characters together that required more development.The lead character, Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies) was an innocent child-like person with no interactive social skills but being someone who gives away everything he has until there is nothing left. He is in love with Eloise (Milla Jovovich) but it is the love of a small child that is only looking for recognition and has only a slight sexual element. The story takes place in a hotel that is filled with mental outpatients and society misfits who all have some delusion they are living under which takes up most of their lives. A stiffed back FBI man, played to the hilt by Mel Gibson, comes in to investigate the possible murder of one of the tenants and upsets the delicate balance of this on-the-edge environment. Every part of this ensemble cast is played to perfection by a group of artists (Jimmy Smits, Peter Storemare, Amanda Plummer, Gloria Stuart, Bud Cort and Julian Sands) that is the strong point of the movie. Anybody studying acting should make this a highlight picture to go onto a greatest hit list. Every role is a little gem. The problem here is that the total was less than the sum of its parts. The story holding all of these off-the-edge players has major flaws like broadcasting a confession tape over public TV before an arrest or the FBI breaking all the rules in public plus many more. One major point is the fact that all of these completely crazy people can have organized meetings to discuss strategy and arrive at some semblance of a result. I wish some of the corporate meetings I have to attend were so clear-cut. These obvious flaws serve to damage this very complex plot. You are introduced to the characters through the process of an investigation one by one and they are played against each other by the FBI man but taken all together the resulting outcome losses its cohesion. The people were very complex yet the complex plot became fragmented. The story and soundtrack written by Bono of U2 is a much better soundtrack than story.A good movie for acting students and a look into a story line where this microcosm society is taking advantage of innocent but not a movie I would like to watch again.