Hotel Artemis should be retitled Hotel Arte-Meh. My movie-buddy convinced me to see it when she relayed to me that her experience was of the “Spectacularly bad” quality. She said things like “I was laughing my ass off” and “The acting was hilarious!” and “I’d love to hear your thoughts”. Well, my friend, here are my thoughts. You LIED to me! This film is bad, but not memorably so. The actors, the writing, the costumes, even the setting all seems to be on autopilot. For a classified thriller with such a creatively implausible set up, I was struggling to pay attention.
“What is the set up?” you ask. Let me tell you.
The year is 2028 and the city is a riot-infested Los Angeles. I know that latter part sounds redundant but this is more riot infested than usual.
Anyway, when a band of criminals gets injured, they seek medical care and shelter at a secret location called the Hotel Artemis which is actually a criminals-only hospital. Before you wonder, the hotel makes its money by having patients pay for memberships. Thank you, movie, for clearing up that potential plot hole.
Throughout the film, we as the audience rarely see the outside of the Hotel in the effort to establish the setting of approaching riots further inducing the claustrophobia. When a bunch of short-fused criminals are stuck together in one place where the number one rule is "Don't kill the other patients", this could make for a wildly fun and inventive setup. If this film was always meant to be bad, then going all out and paying little mind to plot holes might have worked in its favor.
However, there was way too much talking, slow walking (in some cases solely to have the assassin look sexy), too much attempted drama, and not enough thrill. I know that this will sound odd, but too many people clearly tried to make this movie good which oddly made it worse. Jodie Foster and Sterling Brown put on marginally sympathetic performances that belonged in a regular drama, while the rest of the cast looked like they were, understandably so, putting in minimum effort. I did not believe for a second that any of these actors could actually kill me, and I have the defense skills of a dead fish. Guys, you can only get so far on good looks alone.
I will give Hotel Artemis credit that of all the Charlie Day performances, they finally added the component that his character is a cokehead. He plays the hyperactive, anxious dumbass he always plays here, the writers just finally gave the audience the satisfaction of adding the white powder to his character.
Everything you see in the trailer is exaggerated, and all the fight scenes don’t show up until the last fifteen minutes. All in all, I shrug my shoulders at the experience. It might be worth one viewing, but it is certainly not worth the ten dollars I spent to see it. Not even to see Jeff Goldblum as a mobster named The Wolf King. This is “shit weasels” from Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher all over again…
