Grand, Indeed!

Rating: 8/10 (15 March 2015)

I like Mr Anderson. He's quirky. He's funny. He's absurd. He has a superb eye for the use of location and landscape...all qualities the likes of Terry Gilliam, also a social absurdist in his way, appears to have drowned in his interminable visual onanism, in recent years! Anderson also - and this has always been his great strength - to write to the unexpected strengths of his cast. Ralph Feinnes and Tony Revoluri are gloriously funny as the effete, mannered M. Gustave and his Bellhop sidekick, Zero. Willem Dafoe a comically snarling baddie and Adrian Brody similarly vile. There are cameos a-plenty from Anderson stalwarts, slapstick abounds, but however outrageous events become, the script and the characters are always at the forefront. Very good.