An improvement over Anderson's other efforts, but still overrated

Rating: 5/10 (19 January 2015)

Full disclosure: I have sat through two films from Wes Anderson and despised them both. I detested Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums is one of the few films I have ever walked out on. So needless to say that I am fairly immune to his "charms" as a filmmaker. It was with great trepidation that I approached The Grand Budapest Hotel - which seemed to have much of the same ingredients that made the first two films unendurable for me. However, I was curious based on all its Oscar nominations and it was on cable, so I did not have to spend extra for it.
The story is related to a young writer by the mysterious owner of the hotel and centers on a legendary concierge played by Ralph Fiennes, who particularly specializes in flirting, wooing and bedding rich elderly guests. When one dowager (Tilda Swinton in old age make-up) dies she leaves a priceless painting to Fiennes, which awakens the ire of her extended family (primarily Adrien Brody and his nasty assassin Willem Dafoe). When it turns out Swinton was murdered, the family attempt to frame Fiennes, who sets out to prove his innocence with the help of naive lobby boy, protégé and confidant Tony Revolori.
There were a couple of things that surprised me about the film. First, that it was watchable at all. Second, that it actually appeared to have something of a coherent central story despite Anderson's strange trademark flourishes and flights of fancy. I was never bored with the film, although I was never on the edge of my seat either. I also never laughed once during the film and recognized fairly early that this was obviously going to be a funny peculiar film rather than a funny HA HA film. The film itself looks amazing. The art work, the camera work and model work are inventive and eye-catching. Fiennes central performance is wonderful even though there is not much evolution in this character.
Unfortunately, Anderson's film mannerisms are much in evidence. I have yet to figure out how one makes a film seem self-impressed, but Anderson has perfected the tone and it is on full display here. One is always reminded that the film seems to believe it is much funnier and more clever than it truly is. His tone comes off as Woody Allen crossed with Tim Burton with a healthy dose of pretension and nastiness.
Outside of Fiennes, the acting is uniformly unimpressive. A steady parade of familiar faces march past the camera, but most have little or nothing to do and no real point in the story. The wrap-around segment with the author, young writer and the adult version of the lobby boy, which employs Tom Wilkinson, Jude Law and F. Murray Abraham, could have been completely omitted from the film without consequence. In fact, the casting of Abraham seems absurd since Abraham looks nothing like the young Revolori and actually appears to be of a completely different ethnicity. With the exception of Fiennes and Brody, everyone reads their lines in a humorless deadpan that begins to grate after a while. I swear young Revolori, the only cast member to qualify as a co-lead, did not change expression or tone of voice in the entire film. And Edward Norton seems especially out of place as a foreign policeman with a jarring American accent.
Anderson also has the ability to hit on something minor and milk it to death. The sequence where Fiennes contacts a society of concierge's to help him would have been amusing if it stopped after one or two concierge's, but it continues on to where it becomes tired. And why does Bill Murray keep showing up in these films in completely pointless, unfunny and undramatic forgettable cameos? I am also a bit weary of Anderson using pointless death as a punchline. When Brody gets angry at an honest lawyer, goon Dafoe throws the man's cat out the window to its death. Later, a character has his fingers chopped off and murdered and a woman has her head chopped off. The film could have easily ended after the resolution of the dowager's fortune, but Anderson and his fellow writers feel compelled to inform us that one main character was subsequently executed off screen and a third was killed with her child in an outbreak - all of which is delivered in the deadpan whimsy that preceded the most minor of scenes.
In the end, the film is a step up from Anderson's other efforts and nice to look at, with a strong central performance from Fiennes. However, it is overrated, ostentatious, definitely not Oscar-worthy and terminally self-impressed with itself. And for a comedy, it is also not especially funny.