Uneven and disjointed, but the overall package provides more hits than misses

Rating: 6/10 (8 January 2015)

Beginning in the 1930's, Zero Mustafa is a young lobby boy working at the Grand Budapest Hotel. Mustafa ends up under the wing of, and ultimately befriended by, hotel concierge Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes). The story chronicles the life of Zero Mustafa and tells us how he ended up becoming the owner of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Along this journey, Mustafa finds love and also finds his friendship and loyalty to Gustave is tested to the hilt when Gustave is accused of stealing a valuable painting and is also accused of murder. How will this endeavour end?
I found this to be a charming film and I also found it to be a very funny film as well. The narrative is brilliant and is told in such a way that it makes you feel as though a book is actually being read to you (which I suppose is the point). It's a good story and as mentioned the whole 'crime caper' scenario does keep things fresh and fun. This strong narrative is helped by the great chemistry and inter-play between Fiennes and newcomer Revolori. They're a great double act and they both played off well against each other whenever they were on screen together.
Where the film suffers slightly are in the majority of the scenes that don't involve Gustave and Mustafa. I think because they were so good together and because their characters were much better developed than the other characters, there were some sections of the film that didn't involve Gustave and Mustafa where it did get a bit boring. It doesn't help that the antagonists are particularly poorly developed and the writers don't seem to give us any reason to care for them. This meant that I didn't find this film interesting when it was shown from the antagonists perspective. Thank goodness then that Fiennes and Revolori were so good as they really were the driving force behind this film.
Performances across the board were solid and notable praise should go to Fiennes, Brody & Norton. The cinematography was both crisp and bleak which was fitting given the fact that the story takes place between the first and second world war.
I did enjoy Grand Budapest Hotel and found it to be a nice story that was charming, funny, and quite moving towards the end. The only real drawback with it is that it's rather thin in terms of character development and the film does sag a bit in the middle. As I said in my summary though there are more hits than misses and Grand Budapest Hotel is definitely worth checking out.