Il Royal Hotel

This movie is a dramatic interpretation of the documentary film "hotel coolgardie" (I reviewed that also on IMDb)

It tells the story of two backpackers travelling through Australia and they take up a job via a job agency (very common in Australia backpacking community). Only downside the hotel is in south Australia in a mining location.

They are met with a culture shock of how rough the men are and how the women have to cope with chauvinism.

The movie portrays real life in the mining towns of southern Australia where the pub is the main gathering location and where men drink far too much.

There are a few scenes where artistic license is used to make for a more dramatic movie but all in all it's a true reflection of the experiences many female travellers have.

I recommend to watch and then view "Hotel Coolgardie" to compare.

I read the description of this movie expecting either a drama or a crime movie, but I got neither. What I did get to see was a portrait of an Australian pub. Period. Sometimes a bit rowdy as in any pub. And that's it. What the what?

The bad: this story is going nowhere. 2 female pub employees serve beer and ocassionally hang out with some of the pub visitors. Wanna watch that for 90 minutes long? I got bored.

There is a final to this story that does not make sense at all, making me further question the capabilities of the writer of this script.

Kinda tedious. Kinda lame. Nothing much happens except some common pub rowdiness. And that is suppose to be the basis of an entire movie?

Not any good then? Jennifer Garner is a great actress. SHE was THE reason I started watching this movie, but her performance cant cover up the simple fact that this story is void of any drama or thrill. What a dud.

This was a decent enough film on its own merits, however I urge anyone who enjoyed it, or even thought they were going to enjoy it but didn't, to watch Hotel Coolgardie. This is the true story documentary that the film is based on. The film is set in a very similar place, but the characters in the film, rough as they might be supposed to be, are far more clean cut than the people in real life. They are also far less sinister than the real life people, albeit it's more subtle in the documentary. Hotel Coolgardie really shows the pitfalls of isolation and toxic masculinity, and paints a really frightening portrait of rural Australia.

Someone said recently that audiences were more appreciative of good movies 50 years ago, and (by implication) that current audiences don't know quality when they see it. Jesus H. Christ, when seeing the user reviews here that is really and starkly borne out!

This is a perfectly well-made and often chilling drama about toxic masculinity; a realistic portrayal of how things can veer off-track for anybody; a well-acted and believable depiction of culture shock and the psychological problems of isolation and weltschmerz.

Yet most of the reviewers here clearly weren't prepared for this type of movie, and clearly wanted something very different. Well, why did you watch this, you bleedin' nincompoops? Why didn't you turn it off after half an hour? Why did you even bother to write a review? That's on you, peeps. Get better at picking your content.

Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are traveling best friends far from home. They are on a party boat in Sydney, Australia. With money trouble, they take up jobs in a remote mining town. They are barmaids working for Billy (Hugo Weaving) who is drunk most of the time. The town is full of drunken men and not many women.

I want Hanna and Liv to be smarter for the sake of the story. I can't believe that they didn't get the Dickens joke. It's the type of joke to accentuate somebody's stupidity and the movie does exactly that. I do like Hanna's reason for not drinking. I did expect the story to go a different way. It takes a sharp turn near the end which I don't mind. I would like something more during that stormy night so the payoff could be more satisfying. It sets up a couple of things that never pays off. The color coding of the beers should be something but it goes nowhere. I thought this story had a darker back story especially with the British chicks. This movie could be something but it stops short.