"Hotel Rock'n'Roll" is an Austrian movie from 2016, still relatively new, that runs for a bit over 100 minutes and was written and directed by Michael Ostrowski. His co-director is Helmut Köpping and his co-writer is Michael Glawogger and it surprising to see with how many projects the latter is still credited years after his untimely death. Anyway, (according to imdb) this film is part of a trilogy and the last installment there, so you may know some of the characters here. And if you know a bit about German film, then you will also recognize some actors. Of course, there is successful actor and director Detlev Buck in here as one of the rare non-Austrians and then there is Georg Friedrich who made it into my favorites list in recent years really and each time these two are together on the screen, it is very much fun to watch. The aforementioned Ostrowski is also a prolific actor appearing in here and the likes of Zeiler and Hierzegger ring familiar as well. Now as for the story: The film starts with an old man sying and his niece being at his deathbed and she inherits the man's hotel. But she also inherits a great amount of debt at the exact same time. Now it may be a really lucky coincidence that the man they employ as gardener just robbed the bank they owe the money to and is that how they can pay it eventually? Sure a nice explanation that he just robbed this exact bank who is depicted as a bit of an antagonist (of there is one) and this way the crime is somewhat justified. Also we see the way the robbery goes early on and it is more funny than scary really, especially with how they involved a little girl who is inside the bank at the exact same time Friedrich's character robs it. Unfortunately, there are also some characters that do almost nothing for me and that also includes the director's. Not just him though, which means there were long stages for the film where it did not feel too interesting. Shame. I enjoyed this film definitely a lot more in the first 30, maybe 45 minutes than afterwards where it really did not feel too entertaining anymore and frequently just loud and full of hullaballoo (Klamauk as we say here in Germany) and that just isn't enough, especially for a film that never tries to make an impact as a drama or in general as anything other than a comedy. Moments when somebody falls out of a window won't just cut the came. I know you can call it situational comedy, but nah I could not appreciate it. Same about the dialogs. By the way, the Austrian accents are fairly heavy here at times, so maybe even get a good set of subtitles if you are a (native) German (speaker). I also found the music annoying. Actually more than anything else, it was mostly pointless from the lyrics perspective and loud party music, but I admit that this has a lot to do with my subjective taste in music. So overall, judging from early on i thought I'd like this more than I eventually did. The ending was certainly unexpected, but not sure if in a good or bad way because at that point, also with the lengthy final concert I couldn't care less already. Looking at the trilogy as a whole, I think this is about on par with the first film "Nacktschnecken", maybe slightly better. The one in the middle, "Contact High" is the only one out of these 3 that I would give a positive recommendation, easily the best from the bunch. This one here gets a thumbs-down. Only watch it if you enjoyed the previous two, but yeah I don't think you need a recommendation here as of course you should not consider watching this one if it was the first film from the trilogy you'd seen. My suggestion is to skip the watch. Austria has produced many fairly strong comedies in the last decades. This is not one of them.
Review of Hotel Rock'n'Roll
