Grade: B
Director Kitty Green sure likes a buildup. Her last feature film, The Assistant, was all buildup and stasis, but I appreciated it enough for the feature length lull that it was, and the dedicated lead performance from Julia Garner. Garner reunites with Green for The Royal Hotel. The trailer is deceiving. Less happens than what you might think, and when the thriller element finally does rear its head, it’s unsettling in different ways than anticipated. But it sticks in my head the more I let it sit with me.
The movie opens with Canadian best friends Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) in a dark, loud, chaotic club where they can barely make conversation. When Liv’s card is declined when she tries to buy two beers, they step outside into the bright daylight, to the top of the ship they’re on. They are backpacking through Australia, and apparently newly strapped for cash.
As part of what’s described as a work-for-travel program, they take a live-in job as bartenders at The Royal Hotel, in the remotest of the remote towns down under. Maybe there used to be letters on the sign, but now, the name is spelled out in grubby, filthy outlines. It makes Coyote Ugly look like The Skybar in West Hollywood. Hugo Weaving plays their boss, who lives in a nearby trailer, partakes in the beverages, and has no problem barging into Hanna and Liv’s bathroom when they’re wearing nothing but a towel to inform them that the water isn’t working well.
The Assistant was about micro aggressions from men in the office workplace (with Garner as the low-on-the-totem-pole secretary), and critics have observed that The Royal Hotel is about the same theme in a different environment. You’re very vulnerable as a young female bartender in a foreign country where you don’t know anybody. The movie’s foreboding dread is more about what could happen than what actually does – sometimes to the movie’s detriment. Weaving tells the girls things like “We can’t ban him. We’d have to ban everyone!” Henwick and especially Garner are very strong here, and Green and crew do a nice job bringing to life this seedy town that’s less-traveled for good reason.
The movie ends on a note of poetic justice that doesn’t feel completely earned. Though it makes for a great final shot, it’s not the mic drop button the filmmakers seem to think it is. The Royal Hotel might make you frustrated because not enough happens for so long, but it’s still quite the engaging experience, and I hope Green and Garner work together again and again, as I get used to Green’s style. Frustrated and interested aren’t mutually exclusive. I found that out here.
Grade: B
Film Reviews by Mark 
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