The Palace

How do you remember New Year's Eve 1999? I remember a tremendous fireworks display in London, pushing through crowds of revellers, and getting kissed by some strange woman. The world didn't end, except insofar as the machines took over our lives. We all gradually disappeared into the vortex of virtual space. Oh well, whayyagonnado? I find much of Polanski's oeuvre intriguing, weirdly funny, frightful, dramatic, even beautiful at times. It has to be admitted, he has a peculiar sense of humour. Cul-de-Sac. The Fearless Vampire Killers. What? Pirates: these films are weird comedies all. They can raise a smile but rarely provoke actual laughter. Carnage does succeed in tickling one's ribs, but Polanski didn't write that one. The Palace has to be bracketed with those other old peculiars. This film reunited Polanski with his collaborator from 1962's breakthrough, Knife in the Water, screenwriter Jerzy Skolimowski. Knife has three people stuck on a boat. The Palace has a crowd of grotesques in a Swiss hotel, up in the mountains. It's Y2K party time and a disciplined hotel staff must contend with a roving penguin, an incontinent little dog (one of those breeds that looks more like a rat), a squabble of shrieking Russian bimbos, a stretch of old mutton sporting some of the worst facelifts imaginable (think Jack Nicholson in Batman), shady businessmen, a gazillionnaire with his gold-digging BBW, a faded Italian stallion, and well, other various ones, twos and threes. All we need is the right kind of catalyst for a wild farce, upstairs downstairs, the vulgar rich and the exasperated poor. Do we get such a farce? No, not really. The Palace is much like the turn of the millennium was, a bit of a party but not really that big of a deal. The cast do as well as they can, and credit to the actors for playing such bizarre personages. John Cleese earns one laugh for his comical facial expressions. The problem is that there isn't enough story to make this truly memorable. It doesn't have the whimsical eccentricity of The Grand Budapest Hotel. The grotesquerie is just, well, gross, most of the time. At other times, dare I say, a bit boring? But the biggest problem, I suppose, is comprehending the motives of Skolimowski & Polanski for making The Palace. Why did they want to? As I say, it reminded me of Eurotrash, the TV series, obliquely, because of the emphasis on trashy people, but at least we had fun watching that vulgar show, back then...(sound of harp glissandi) all those years ago...

How do you remember New Year's Eve 1999? I remember a tremendous fireworks display in London, pushing through crowds of revellers, and getting kissed by some strange woman. The world didn't end, except insofar as the machines took over our lives. We all gradually disappeared into the vortex of virtual space. Oh well, whayyagonnado? I find much of Polanski's oeuvre intriguing, weirdly funny, frightful, dramatic, even beautiful at times. It has to be admitted, he has a peculiar sense of humour. Cul-de-Sac. The Fearless Vampire Killers. What? Pirates. These films are weird comedies all. They can raise a smile but rarely provoke actual laughter. Carnage does succeed in tickling one's ribs, but Polanski didn't write that one. The Palace has to be bracketed with the other old peculiars. This film reunited RP with his collaborator from 1962's breakthrough, Knife in the Water, screenwriter Jerzy Skolimowski. Sixty or so years on. Ok. Knife has three people stuck on a boat. The Palace has a crowd of grotesques in a Swiss hotel, up in the mountains. It's Y2K part time and a disciplined hotel staff must contend with a roving penguin, an incontinent little dog (one of those breeds that looks more like a rat), a squabble of shrieking Russian bimbos, a stretch of old mutton sporting some of the worst facelifts imaginable (think Jack Nicholson in Batman), shady businessmen, a gazillionnaire with his gold-digging BBW, a faded Italian stallion, and well, other various ones, twos and threes. All we need is the right kind of catalyst for a wild farce, upstairs downstairs, the vulgar rich and the exasperated poor. Do we get such a farce? No, not really. The Palace is much like the turn of the millennium was, a bit of a party but not really that big of a deal. The cast do as well as they can, and credit to the actors for playing such bizarre personages. John Cleese earns one laugh for his comical facial expressions. The problem is there isn't enough story to make this truly memorable. It doesn't have the whimsical eccentricity of The Grand Budapest Hotel. The grotesquerie is just, well, gross, most of the time. At other times, dare I say, a bit boring? But the biggest problem, I suppose, is comprehending the motives of Skolimowski & Polanski for making it. Why did they want to? As I say, it reminded me of Eurotrash, the TV series, obliquely, but at least we had fun watching that show.

Film Money listen up: next time someone pitches you a film, put aside the reputations of the talent attached and READ THE EFFING SCRIPT ALL THE WAY THROUGH, okay? Don't just say to yourself, "Well, it's got Polanski and Cleese and Ardant, so... yeah!" READ! If it's nothing more than silos of self-contained stories with only The Man In Charge running frantically between them trying to keep Armageddon from happening, then it's all been overdone many times before and it's not worth putting your good money after bad. Sadly, Daddy Warbucks didn't read the script for "The Palace"; he just forked over more than $18,000,000 based on the Polanski-Cleese-Ardant package and never looked back. If he had, he would have seen an atrocity on film. A murder of reputations. A tragedy of a comedy. In short, an embarrassment. I noticed on Rotten Tomatoes that critics gave this film a 6%, while viewers gave it a 65%. If ever there was a time to fear that these viewers are the same people wildly entertained by the fictional TV series "Ow, My Balls!" featured in the film "Idiocracy," now is that time. If you don't heed my advice, the next thing you'll do is put untold millions into "Dude, Where's My Car 2: Lost At the Mall." READ. THE. SCRIPT.

The film is very good. It is shot in one location(The Gstaad Palace in Switzerland here) like many of Polanski's films. Both Mickey Rourke and Oliver Masucci are great here. Many renowned actors working today would fall flat on their face if they tried to play these two characters. Who better to be rude to everything and everyone around him than Mickey Rourke? But his character has depth here. He is very warm and very friendly with the Bank Manager character. Clearly Rourke is one of the most talented actors of his generation. His face certainly looks very different than what it once was but it fits in with the character and doesn't detract from the quality of his performance. The film has minor flaws like some hideous exterior shots of the hotel and the final frame is certainly not great especially when taken out of context. But I was never bored and there is always something going on(tracking shots through hallways, constant use of red and green in the frame and an outstanding first scene). Apart from the two leads newcomer Bronwyn James also stood out. She stole every scene away from the great John Cleese when they were together especially before he ultimately went to his happy place. It is not among the best of Polanski but easily better than most well rated films out there mainly because they don't have a master like Polanski behind the wheel.

It is New Year's Eve 1999, at a luxury hotel in Switzerland. A grotesque gallery of the filthy rich gather to see in the new year, with many afraid the Y2K bug is imminently about to destroy western civilization... ------------- Roman Polanski's latest film flopped at the box office and got awful reviews, but of course that's mostly because of the present political climate and the line the mainstream media have taken to "cancel" its creator. The film IS indubitably erratic, especially early on: full use is not made of the majority of story-lines, and most don't conclude in any satisfactory way. It also feels a little rushed and uncertain and as though several corners (and scenes) were cut. But there are a bunch of funny and ludicrous moments along the way, and the overall freak-show tone of it - the nightmarish way it depicts humanity, especially the very rich - feels much like something out of Gulliver's Travels. It doesn't more than half-succeed at any point, but at least it's reaching for something. The cast has a variety of slightly over the hill famous faces, like Mickey Rourke, Fanny Ardant, and John Cleese as a nonagenarian oil tycoon celebrating his one year wedding anniversary with his dumpy young bride. But the best performance is probably by Hansueli Kopf, as the hotel director tirelessly trying to please them all and hold the show together. Polanski has always been terrible at comedy; much too broad and heavy-handed, and it's clear some of the things that make him laugh don't translate into tickling most other people. But the truth is, I definitely enjoyed this one more than any of his other ones, like "The Fearless Vampire Killers", "What?" and "Pirates". I could be wrong, but the impression I get is that he just wanted one time to make a decent comedy before he dies, and if this does turn out to be the last film he ever makes, he really didn't do as bad as we're being told.

I thought that the movie was building up to something good, a lot of characters with different stories and I keep wondering if it was supposed to be funny because nothing made me laugh. It kept on building nonsense, but I kept hoping for the punch line. You know, Blake Edwards style when all of the sudden everything gets tied up into a slapstick hilarious mess. More than an hour into the movie I realized that, this was as good as it gets. Not a comedy, not drama... nothing!. But I watched it until the end just curious to know how they would fill the plot holes, and the movie ends just full of plot holes. A dog fu**** a pinguin on the back... The End.

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source: The Palace

A riff on Knife in the water ... though do not compare those two! So no pun intended as always. Polanski has not lost his touch. Whatever one may think of him personally (I won't go into his legal issues, you either know about them, can look for them and/or do not care) ... he is a really good director! The cast he assembled speaks for itself. The comedy is something you have to like, but the Hotel Manager is absolutely fantastic! Then you have John Cleese who is able to perform ... in many ways! Even without text ... as his comedy tour says (title): watch me before I die - I am paraphrasing here ... but you get the point. That said, there is a lot of mayhem going on ... and it all has the absolute highlight at the end ... cgi "joke" ... but that should not matter ... had a few laugh out loud moments myself ... you can have quite a lot of fun with it.