Slept Through About 40% of This Hyper Acclaimed Mess

Rating: 2/10 (19 August 2014)

Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson's debut film, was a comic delight. Since then, most of his films have left me unimpressed or disappointed. He has resorted to quirkiness and deadpan dialog increasingly. While I found "The Royal Tenenbaums" at least watchable, as was "Rushmore", (though neither worth recommending), "Moonrise Kingdom" and now "The Grand Budapest Hotel" are examples of a director who is so consumed with his style, that the story takes a back seat. All the dialog sounds like it came from the same person. As others have noted, like the naked emperor, Anderson wants you to notice how cute he can be, with centered shots that have characters emerging from a hole one at a time from each of four 90 degree angles. Ha Ha Ha! But despite this being a comedy of sorts, laughs from the audience I was in were few and far between. I gave the film 2 stars, mainly because the sets were so pretty to look at, but like this film and Moonrise Kingdom, they were simply facades, with little substance beyond the surface appearance.