Chelsea Walls (2002) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Well sir, that's one of the less pretentious examples of dialogue in this movie. In fact, that line was surprisingly coherent, if pretentious. Most of the dialogue is both pretentious and incoherent, as if written by a college sophomore from Iowa who went to the big city, smoked his first dope, read Howl!, and was inspired. Or maybe it was in a foreign language and I missed the subtitles.

Over the course of many generations, the Chelsea Hotel in downtown Manhattan (23rd street) has been host to many of the most important urban voices of American letters, and even its share of talented foreigners. Tennessee Williams, Bob Dylan, Mark Twain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dylan Thomas, Leonard Cohen, Brendan Behan, and Thomas Wolfe are some of the people who lived within its rooms, immersed in the culture of the Village, living in the belief that noble poverty creates high art.

This film romanticizes the present as an extension of the Chelsea's fabled past, and posits that within its crumbling walls resides the hope that America's tomorrow will continue to include art, and not just commerce, as tortured visionaries struggle to create their own works of transcendent art.

Yeah, right.

If anyone knows that guy who runs The Razzies, put him on to this movie, which makes Freddy Got Fingered, in comparison, seem to be Schindler's List. Despite a great cast, this is the first truly unwatchable movie I've seen since Dead Babies.

Erin Meister of the Boston Globe summed it up perfectly:

Were Dylan Thomas alive to witness first-time director Ethan Hawke's strained Chelsea Walls, he might have been tempted to change his landmark poem to, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Theatre."

Here's what some of the other critics had to say"

The cinematic equivalent of patronizing a bar favored by pretentious, untalented artistes who enjoy moaning about their cruel fate.

A dreary, incoherent, self-indulgent mess of a movie in which a bunch of pompous windbags drone on inanely for two hours...a cacophony of pretentious, meaningless prattle.

Like the Chelsea's denizens ... Burdette's collage-form scenario tends to over-romanticize the spiritual desolation of the struggling artiste.

Hampered -- no, paralyzed -- by a self-indulgent script ... that aims for poetry and ends up sounding like satire.

Hawke’s film, a boring, pretentious waste of nearly two hours, doesn’t tell you anything except that the Chelsea Hotel today is populated by whiny, pathetic, starving and untalented artistes.

Confirms the nagging suspicion that Ethan Hawke would be even worse behind the camera than he is in front of it.

Calling it pretentious doesn't do justice to the toxic faux-bohemianism and unearned self-regard that bubble and ooze out of every aspect of Chelsea Walls. (That quote links to the review, from Jonathan Foreman of the New York Post, who has the best bullshit detector of any major critic, in my opinion.)

 

Roger Ebert saw the film twice, hated it the first time, then wrote a glowing review after the second viewing. I linked his review below, if you want to read the other side of the story.