BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (2018)

Everyone’s a fraud in writer/producer/director (megalomaniac?) Drew Goddard’s fever dream about ‘doings’ at the El Royale Motor Lodge.  And that would include Drew Goddard, so self-aware of his own fraudulent cleverness the film feels positively onanistic.  With a wing of fancy suites, the Royale, which straddles the Nevada/California stateline*, actually functions as a honey-trap for the rich & horny, with camera-ready inner core to facilitate filming illicit intimacies for future blackmail.  Enter Jeff Bridges: fraudulent priest hunting up a long-buried bag of stolen loot; Jon Hamm: fraudulent vacuum salesman & secret FBI agent (note cornpone Southern accent); non-fraudulent Cynthia Erivo: backup R&B singer with minor Reno booking; fraudulent all-purpose hotel deskman Lewis Pullman: post-Vietnam PTSD sniper; Dakota Johnson: fraudulent Cali-counter-culture princess with violence issues & a mentally-challenged sexpot sister; and the lux Motor Lodge itself, most fraudulent of all.  Goddard plays linear time games with theatrical staging techniques, stop-and-start narrative backstories & reveals, and the cast has good fun constantly reversing expectations.  If only Goddard knew when to stop twisting; the film runs an absurd 2'20".  By the time Chris Hemsworth shows up as a fraudulent sicko cult-leader/prophet, the film is begging to be put down.  (Hemsworth may be buried by the acting talent surrounding him, but does look like a God . . . or Brad Pitt in TROY.)  Happily, there’s lots of good mid-60s Motown to carry us along.  (Any film with a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox playing the Four Tops/'Bernadette' has its charms.)  But the fun keeps drifting off course, whether it’s Bridges who just happens to have knock-out drops in his pocket, Erivo knowing how to plug in a carburetor, a conveniently hidden shotgun under a bed . . . shaggy dog story stuff.  And that’s okay, but then using a dead serious Vietnam military massacre to tie up loose ends is tacky.  No follow up feature for Goddard, but the guy is nothing if not resilient.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Little doubt Goddard made a close study of Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT/’15.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-hateful-eight-2015.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Oddly, the physical stateline that runs thru the middle of the lobby doesn’t figure into the plot at all.  You’ll find it featured in the wildly popular divorce dramedy: LIGHTNIN’, a huge stage success in 1917; a silent hit for John Ford in 1925; and an Early Talkie for Henry King with Will Rodgers 1930.  Both films slow as molasses in winter.  Hence the title character’s nickname, LIGHTNIN’!