Anderson's Weakest, but still a artistic blast!

Rating: 8/10 (27 March 2014)

If you have seen my anticipated 2014 list, then you probably already guessed that I would review this film and its about time. I am still a bit underwhelmed with some of the aspects of this film, such as the development of the relationships. But Anderson's artistic view has not been damaged at all. The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson's latest film coming out of his masterpiece Moonrise Kingdom.
The narrative of the film is filmed very interestingly. The movie, is filmed into 3 camera ratios. 1.33, 1.85, and of course, 2.35:1 each for different time lines. The story is about a girl who reads a book called The Grand Budapest Hotel, written by a man named Author. Author is the narrator of this film and tells us about an encounter of a man he had met at the GB Hotel in the late 60's. He meets a man named Zero, who he is interested in telling him his adventures as a bellboy in 1932.
He is under the control of M. Gustave H. The owner of the hotel. But a few days later, things get worse. One of Gustave's Lovers, Madamme D, is killed from poisoning and on her will leaves him a painting called "Boy With Apple" but an Angry son Dmitri refuses to let him have it. Zero and Gustave have no choice but to steal it and things become increasingly dangerous as Dmitri sets out to find Gustave and Zero with Jopling, a very scary assassin who is ruthless (Ex. He slams a door on one of the major characters Kovac's fingers and they get cut off.) Zero must go on a journey to prove that Gustave is innocent.
Starting with the Production Design, it looks amazing. Wes Anderson is known for using a style to attract people's attention to the story which is a brilliant way of getting an audience to care about the movie. The Hotel is fantastic with its huge rooms, service and much more. The costumes are very colorful, with purple and yellow being one of many colors of the gorgeous costumes.
Anderson's regulars are all back with Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson return. But to my disappointment, people like Murray and Wilson are wasted. You only see about a minute of them on screen so we can focus on major characters. In fact, why bother having Murray and Schwartzman at all? The movie could have been better without the characters of M. Chuck and M. Ivan.
All the actors are incredible in this film, the best of the bunch being Brody and Willem Dafoe as Jopling. They are some of the most memorable villains in recent cinema memory. Jopling I like the most because he frightens me a lot. Who wouldn't be scared of a man who can decapitate your head and put it into a laundry basket or throwing your cat out the window? But some of the relationships in the film like with Zero and Agatha are under developed and don't explain very much how they fell in love. Was it love in first site? The script gives hint to that, but its not confirmed.
As I said before, the narrative is great thanks to the Camera work. When you first see the 1.33 ratio, you know your going to go on a classic epic adventure with memorable characters. Its a throwback to some of the greatest epics of all time.
This movie will not disappoint Wes Anderson fans even though it is the weakest of his movies I have seen. But it will appeal to many people and hopefully the movie does well in the theater and on Blu Ray also.
85/100 B