100 entertaining minutes, lots of love to detail

Rating: 6/10 (10 February 2015)

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" is the newest film by Wes Anderson and also the one that gave him more nominations at the Academy Awards than anything he has done before. Of course, he also wrote the film, together with Hugo Guinness with whom he collaborated in different ways already for "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "The Royal Tenenbaums". The film begins with an old man telling a story to a younger man and we find out that the old man is the owner of "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and worked as a lobby boy many decades ago under Ralph Fiennes' central character. This film is very Wes Anderson: the straight camera shots at objects people, the unique set decorations and the subtle humor from start to finish in the script, especially the way Fiennes' character interacts with everybody. The Mendl cakes also fit it perfectly. The big shooting at the end was pretty hilarious. It was obviously not to be taken seriously and just so random just like the way the characters slided down the snow with so much speed earlier in the film.
The film is packed with known actors, mostly with very small performances, sometimes only one or two scenes: Adrian Brody, Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Tom Wilkinson, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum, Owen Wilson, all of them Oscar nominees (the latter two not for acting). And finally Willem Dafoe is also in the film, as a ruthless killer with a somewhat different villain performance than his Spider Man turn, but equally great. He is just so good when it comes to playing scary, maybe my favorite from this movie. From the German perspective, I was surprised to see Michalowski, Markovics and Lukas in several scenes.
Occasionally, it is a bit style over substance, but most of the time, it's a decent movie. However, I am still surprised about the awards recognition it got. Best comedy/musical/screenplay of the year I cannot agree with. That does not mean it's bad though. I would recommend it, especially if you have seen and liked some of Anderson's previous films. Also, I'm curious what Revolori's career will look like in the coming years. The mentor/student relationship with his character and Fiennes' may be the same like with Fiennes being his teacher in terms of acting in this film. Will he disappear quickly or have a grand career? Time will tell.