K-SCORE: 73
Writer/Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, F. Murray Abraham, Matthieu Amalric, Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson
Spoiler Level: Minor
I never crave a Wes Anderson film, but usually enjoy watching them nonetheless. They’re weird, but weird isn’t bad. The distinctive style of his filmmaking almost defies accurate description. It’s as if everything, plot, characters, and settings are all to be taken sixty percent seriously and viewed as an unrealistic joke forty percent of the time. Or maybe it’s forty - sixty. Not sure. Any which way you slice it, it’s hard to critique because the stories function, the characters are interesting, and the whole presentation is amusing in its own way.
This one revolves around a hotel in The Republic of Zubrowka, the wealthy owner who dies and leaves an alternate will to be opened only in the event of her murder, a prison break, and a painting everyone’s obsessed with called Boy with Apple. The plot points are so strange that they often have to be told to the viewer with narration, which would be a fault except the narration itself is funny. The Grand Budapest Hotel, like Moonrise Kingdom, like The Royal Tenenbaums, like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, like Fantastic Mr. Fox will make you giggle, and follow along in a low-stakes way. Wes Anderson is also a director capable of attracting a ton of talented actors to star in small roles, so even if you’re not engaged with the story, you’re likely to be amused by the performances of Bill Murray, Harvey Keitel and the like.
My essential issue is that the Wes Anderson style has been done enough times now that I’ve grown bored with it. The emotions a film like Grand Budapest Hotel drums up are identical to those others I listed, so the whole thing is low stakes and drags for anyone who has seen other movies in Anderson’s filmography and isn’t entirely sold on the brilliance of the format. The Grand Budapest is a little stale, but taken on its own it and its creator should be commended for delivering an entertaining and functional product.