A manic pace and style over substance

Rating: 1/10 (17 January 2015)

I have given this film 1/10, only because it is not possible to rate it zero.
I don't know why I never learn: ever since Rushmore, a film to which I simply could not warm up, every time I watch one of Wes Anderson's films, I end up disliking it intensely. That was the case with Rushmore, then The Royal Tennenbaums, followed by Moonrise Kingdom, and now The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Two of my good friends, whose judgment in films I trust, told me what a great film this was. With that in mind, I began watching it, but within 20 minutes, I realized I would not like the film, just as I had not enjoyed watching the other Anderson films before. One reason was the manic pace at which the actors delivered their lines and the musical score rolled; another was how completely indifferent to their predicaments the characters left me.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is a pretentious film, in which visual style stifles any substance its talented actors might have brought to the story.