Critical reception The Million Dollar Hotel received generally negative reviews from critics. It holds a 25% approval rating on
Rotten Tomatoes, based on 45 reviews, with an average rating of 4.4/10. It also holds a rating of 25 out of 100 on
Metacritic, despite winning the Silver Bear at the
Berlin International Film Festival in 2000. In an October 2000 press conference in
Sydney, before the Australian release of the film,
Mel Gibson said, "I thought it was as boring as a dog's ass." He later explained: It was at the end of a day where I had done 6,000 interviews, some guy was ragging on the film and it just slipped out. Later, I thought 'God, why did I say that? I'm an idiot! I produced this film. I'm distributing it!' It was pretty thoughtless of me, because a lot of people worked very hard on that film, and the fact is there are moments of genius in it. The soundtrack is by U2, and it's phenomenal. So I really regret saying that. I have written a lot of apology letters about it.
Box office The day after screening at the
Berlin Film Festival on February 9, 2000, the film opened on 111 screens in Germany, grossing
Deutschemark 620,5444 ($312,617) in its first four days finishing in tenth place at the box office. The film opened in Italy on 225 screens at the end of March 2000 and went on to gross over $6 million there. It opened in the United States on February 2, 2001 and grossed $29,483 from 10 theatres in its opening weekend and grossed $59,989 in total. It grossed $45,994 in Australia. ==Soundtrack==