This movie reminded me of the road trips my family took in the late sixties, early seventies. For some reason, I don’t remember going on the turnpike or parkway but more county highways and driving past hotels/motels that had seen better days. I wondered, who stays at places like that?
The El Royale is definitely one of those places. Sure it has its shtick of being half in California and half in Nevada (California rooms are $1 more a night). Why? Because it’s California we are told. FYI the room rate is $8 a night!! That’s your first clue to the timeframe of this movie. The off season, vacant hotel has a flood of visitors as the movie begins. A vacuum salesman, priest, a woman singer and female hippie . Ok, if you don’t get it with the vacuum salesman and hippie clue, it’s around 1969-1970.
So, why all of a sudden, does a previously vacant hotel, now have a line at registration? Something sounds fishy and we find out pretty quickly all is not as it seems. Our vacuum salesman is actually a FBI agent who is cleaning up the surveillance equipment planted in the honeymoon suite, when he discovers other surveillance equipment which isn’t theirs. What’s he do? He calls J Edgar Hoover directly from a phone booth!! OK, so we know something big and political happened at the El Royale recently. And our friendly priest, NOT a priest of course. He’s pulling up floorboards in a room down from FBI central looking for a suitcase full of cash from a bank robbery years prior. But, he has early onset Alzheimer’s and can’t remember the room number. What to do? He’s going to drug the female singer and tear up her floorboards, but of course she sees him and cracks him over the head with a bottle. She’s the only smart one because she’s like, I’m getting out of here because why is a priest trying to drug me? However, J Edgar told fake salesman to disable all the cars and he had time to do that before hippie girl takes him out with a shotgun. And that’s when the body count starts
The writer uses effective flashbacks to tell us the main characters life stories and how their paths led them to the El Royale. These backstories are ritual to the storyline and make you invested in the characters. The headlines of 1969-70 work well in the storyline. The Vietnam War, racial tension, drug use, Nixon and prior president’s dirty politics, Charles Manson type murders are all ingredients folded into the plot. Religion is another major component, something you wouldn’t think of in this timeframe. The last 10-12 minutes of this movie are some of its best. A minor character rises to become a savior of sorts, only to pay the price for that role.
This is a quirky movie with tinges of Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch, but it stands on its own
The movie is a bit long at 2 hrs 20 minutes and for that reason I give Bad Times At The El Royale a solid C+.
This is definitely worth a matinee ticket price, however paying full price at a theatre, I don’t think so. However, it’s definitely worth a full price at Redbox, which should be available soon given its competition at the Box Office right now
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