A Review of The Grand Budapest Hotel

Watching a Wes Anderson film is kind of like taking a walk through a museum of anthropology; you go to marvel at the rich iconography, fantastical costumes and artifacts of another time. It’s really not such a bad place to hang out for a few hours. The Grand Budapest Hotel is Anderson’s latest theatrical spectacle and as you might expect from some of his other films, the reel is full of oddball characters, absurd situations, ornate backdrops, witty dialogue and of course, Bill Murray.

Meet Gustave H. (played the fabulous Ralph Fiennes) the Concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel who takes to referring to both friends and foes simply as ‘Darling’. Gustave is a dapper gentleman that represents an age of elegance and refinement gone by. With his well-manicured moustache and love for his perfume L’Air de Panache, he divides his time between grooming his protégé, Zero Mustafa, the new Lobby Boy, and bedding the rich old dames who visit the hotel. You’ll never meet another on screen character that can deliver the F-bomb with such cultivated zeal.

“You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant… oh, fuck it.”

When the concierge’s geriatric lover Madame D is found dead, he is named to inherit an invaluable painting in her possession, which enrages the departed’s villainous son Dmitri (the also fabulous Adrien Brody). Chaos ensues as Gustave and Zero scramble to clear his name and the two impart of a series of misadventures that involve incarceration, evading police and a high speed chase on a toboggan.

“You’re looking so well darling, you really are. I don’t know what sort of cream they put on you down at the morgue but, I want some”

There are so many great cameos by the usual troupe of actors devoted to Anderson’s films but Willem Dafoe really takes the cake as J.G. Jopling, the nefarious hit man who works for Dmitri. Dafoe’s dark and sinister presence is only confounded by his ridiculous overbite and buzz cut that reminds you of a homely lap dog.

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