As far as Wes Anderson goes, one either gets him or one doesn't. I don't.

Rating: 3/10 (25 February 2015)

"The Grand Budapest Hotel", Wes Anderson's most successful film to date, is visually enthralling, every frame a veritable art museum painting (and not just on the level of "Boy with Apple"), cleverly utilizing glass-paintings and CGI-enhanced locations in Germany and Poland actually to the level of picture postcards. That may also be its problem. As interesting as the film would seem to be theoretically, it seems as hollow and superficial as a picture postcard. Its extraordinary cast members (which includes 11 previous Oscar nominees and 5 Oscar winners) posture themselves like mannequins throughout a fast-paced exercise that feels no deeper than an elaborate puppet show. Admittedly, I've had a long-term aversion to Anderson's 'style', so annoying in its contrived stance of false naiveté. While overwhelmed by the beauty in every sequence, I search in vain for the least empathy with a single character and any emotion beyond the superficial. Many swoon over this film, but its adoration to me makes more sense on a sociological level in sync with the Twitter and Instagram sound-bite age we live in. As I said to a good friend (who's a Wes Anderson fan) after we left the theater, "How could anyone spend so much money on such a marvelous cast and such gorgeous images and produce something so shallow and emotionless?" I'm still waiting for the answer.