Warped and witty at warp speed

Rating: 8/10 (7 June 2014)

This is a slick slapstick comedy adventure film taken at a fast pace without a trace of heaviness but with a continual cleverness that had me glued to my chair for the 99 minutes in case I missed anything. More happens in any one minute in here that happens in some entire films (if you don't believe me just try Once Upon A Time In Anatolia for comparison), this is a motion picture first and foremost designed to entertain and make money.
Faded hotel owner tells the story of his success in life to an interested guest, how he started off as a eccentric lobby boy to an eccentric employer superbly played by Ralph Fiennes. An elderly rich female  patron dies or is murdered leading to Fiennes stealing a valuable painting, going to jail, and having her thwarted and thrusting family on his and everyone else's heels. And much more. It's a sumptuous and atmospheric world portrayed in a lucid cartoony style – one of my favourite bits being what the impetuous Willem Dafoe did in lawyer Jeff Goldblum's office and Goldblum's perfectly delayed reaction to it. Other fantastic (in every sense of the word) bits: the deep-end introduction of Zero the lobby boy; the cartoon escape from the prison; the 200 mph ski/sled chase through the snow and abrupt end; the call for help to the Society Of The Crossed Keys; the mass pointless shoot-out at the hotel. So many good witty and stylish scenes! Unfortunately a few tasteless ones too, the occasional gratuitous swearing, coarseness and violence is at least understandable – no matter whether the film is in 1932 or 1968 you know damn well you're really still in 2014 and if at all, not so easily shocked. However, replacing the "valuable painting" for a piece of pointless graphic pornography is neither easy to get down or get off on – you know damn well the makers (and maybe a larger section of the audience) wouldn't have countenanced a portrait of two gay men masturbating instead - after all, can't be too shocking.
Fiennes is memorable as the bizarre lead character Gustave, and in his bizarre relationship to the round-eyed Zero during their journey through this marvellously cynical live-action cartoon for the 21st century. Definitely not another Trouble In Paradise or Grand Hotel and nowhere near being a perfect film but overall, totally engrossing and hugely enjoyable hokum worthy of repeat viewingsbut with room for reservations.