‘El Royale’ a talky, Tarantino wannabe
“Bad Times at the El Royale” appears to be writer-director Drew Goddard’s attempt to make a Quentin Tarantino film, and is a 140-minute remix of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and the board game Clue. The action of “Bad Times at the El Royale” begins in 1959 in Lake Tahoe when someone buries a stash of cash under the floorboards of a room at the El Royale, a legendary casino-hotel on the dividing line between California and Nevada. Ten years later, a group converges at the El Royale, which has lost much of its Rat Pack and rock star luster and barely has any staff outside of young Miles (Lewis Pullman), who insists only certain rooms at the El Royale, which boasts a jukebox and an old automat of all things, are currently habitable. Among the new guests are the rather patently phony Father Daniel Flynn (a bearded Jeff Bridges), motormouthed vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm, mistaking quantity of dialogue for quality), tight-mouthed R&B songbird Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) and sisters Emily (Dakota Johnson, ditto) and Ruth Summerspring (Cailee Spaeny). Darlene shows up with bed rolls, and so Laramie instantly assumes this young black woman must be a prostitute. As you might have surmised, the El Royale, which has lost its gambling license, has many more secrets. Like Tarantino’s works, “Bad Times at the El Royale” hearkens back to the swinging ’60s and ’70s, boasts an excess of seemingly clever dialogue delivered at breakneck, if not break-tongue pace and spurts of extreme bloody violence. No, we do not encounter a pair of ghostly little girl twins in the hallway, but we might as well. Miles is concerned about the condition of his immortal soul because of his sins and keeps asking to confess to dubious Father Flynn. Darlene rehearses in her room, singing the Isley Brothers’ “This Old Heart of Mine,” The Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel” and an Otis Redding hit. The parking lot is full of vintage rides, disabled to keep the guests from leaving in the middle of a rainstorm. Ringing bells are a motif in the film, front desk bells, alarm bells, ringing phones, etc. (but not box office bells, I’m guessing). Father Flynn gets whacked over the head so hard my head hurt. By the time the film’s topbilled actor Chris Hemsworth, playing a variation of Charles Manson, arrives, along with a band of deadeyed cultists, you may be ready to check out. Hemsworth gets to shake his booty and brandish his shiny abs and righteous pecs and play Russian roulette with a real roulette wheel with Emily, Miles and Father Flynn. The recently deceased Manson seems suddenly everywhere. Not only is he the basis of Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” in which he is being played by veteran Aussie actor Damon Herriman (“The Water Diviner”), Brit Linus Roache plays a Manson knockoff in the recent cult hit “Mandy.” When it rains (psychos), it pours.
(“Bad Times at the El Royale” contains extreme