Hooray for Hollywood & Hogwarts

It sits on the boulevard like a combination of Hollywood and Hogwarts, all grand and glittery and more than slightly excessive.

Critics call it a monstrosity, its supporters call it a miracle. My friend Jeffrey wonders why there’s an elephant on the ceiling.

It was named Hollywood & Highland by its builders because that’s where it is. While the name may seem to manifest a significant lack of imagination, one can’t help but be impressed by its awesome simplicity.

For those who have yet to witness the structure’s $615-million splendor either up close or from the tattoo parlor across the street, it is indeed an eye-catching edifice with, as a colleague wrote, its “soaring walls and grand entryway.”

And don’t forget the elephant on the ceiling.

That was the rather imaginative description by my 8-year-old grandson, whom I took to see “Harry Potter” at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, which, in a way, has been swallowed up by Hollywood & Hogwarts, I mean Highland. (Hogwarts, for those out of the loop, is the palatial school for wizards in the movie.)

The large, white sculpture of an elephant, for reasons that escape just about everyone, actually sits on a giant pedestal that overlooks a kind of trinket and fast-food village edged by upscale boutiques.

H&H; is a mall, but it isn’t a mall, because very few malls contain concert halls. This one has the Kodak Theatre. There is also a Grand Ballroom, and just off the ballroom a kitchen where Wolfgang Puck, the king of baked goat cheese, will preside.

Like Hollywood itself, H&H; is a combination of imagination, sentimentality and bad taste. To quote the writer William Gass, “When money tries to buy beauty, it tends to purchase a kind of courteous kitsch.”

Sure, but ain’t that Hollywood, baby?

It was my first visit to the new structure, which, as I mentioned earlier, has won both raves and roars of disapproval for every aspect of its existence. Professional critics have savaged everything but the restrooms, which I found to be adequate if not beautiful. A restroom doesn’t require soaring walls to be functional.

I sometimes suspect that real critics are just too intense about their expertise to stand across the street and view new structures from the standpoint of a tattoo artist. My aforementioned colleague, Mitchell Landsberg, did just that.

He spoke with tattooist Jonas West, whose arms bore images of skulls, waves, flames and naked girls, and who, from the point of view of one who finds such body decor attractive, judged Hollywood’s Hogwarts to be beautiful, adding: “I totally dig it, and hopefully a lot of people will come here.”

Exactly.

That’s what it’s all about, you see, an announcement or a warning, perhaps, that Hollywood is back, with all of its fun and vulgarity, its elephant on the ceiling and its plunging decolletage. And I, for one, say welcome.

I was moved to visit H&H; after meeting Oscar Arslanian at a party. He’s a board member of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Hollywood Arts Council and has lived in what we used to call Tinseltown for 33 years. He sees the presence of Hollywood & Highland as not only a new beginning but also a reemergence of what has always been there. The good things.

“People have always been looking for an excuse to come to Hollywood,” he said, “and for years they’ve been disappointed. Not just tourists from Japan, but from Burbank and Glendale too. And now with Hollywood & Highland, we’re all going to benefit.”

Oscar was passionate about the place when I first met him about 20 years ago, but there wasn’t much to brag about back then. Now he feels that there is. So cue the band, and everybody sing “Hooray for Hollywood.”

I have been one of many who have trashed Hollywood over the years for its gradual decline from the home of the stars to the home of hookers and drug dealers and their attendant trolls.

However glitzy and phony it might have been when it was, well, Hollywoodian, it was still better than what it became. I mean, how many sex shops does a community need?

Now at least the presence of Hollywood & Hogwarts signals a change in direction, despite carping objections from community naysayers about noise and traffic. They were happier with whispery drug deals on street corners and in alleys?

I don’t think so.

What’s coming next, whether you like it or not, is a project that will be called Gateway to Hollywood: a 30-foot-high glass tower with the word “Hollywood” running down the tower’s three sides in illuminated letters. It will be on the median where Franklin and Wilcox avenues meet, but thank God, it wasn’t named the Tower at Franklin & Wilcox.

I’m sure critics will think it ugly and useless, but critics have said the same of the Eiffel Tower and the Mona Lisa and probably, going back a bit, the Greek Parthenon, the Roman Coliseum and the sculptured Nike of Samothrace. Now we recognize them as essential elements of the culture that existed at a certain time.

That, I think, will be the enduring legacy of Hollywood & Hogwarts and probably the Gateway Tower too. A thousand years from now, they’ll look back and say, “That was Hollywood, all right.”

But I don’t know what they’ll say about the elephant on the ceiling.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He is at al.martinez@latimes.com.