Wes Anderson has always been a bit of a mystery to me. His films are remarkably consistent in their approach and stylistic idiosyncrasies, yet they seem equally capable of leaving me rapturous ("Moonrise Kingdom") or cold ("The Darjeeling Limited"). I'm not alone here: Check out any fan's list of Anderson films from best to worst, and opinions differ every time.
Anderson has been on a roll lately. His last two films, "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "Moonrise Kingdom," both made my Top 10 lists, and I was eagerly anticipating "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Having seen it, though, I'd have to say that Anderson is at that point in his career where he needs to throw the cards in the air and start over. Instead, he merely cuts the deck and we're dealt an almost identical hand.
"The Grand Budapest Hotel," set in the fictional Eastern European republic of Zubrowka, features Jude Law as an author who, in a voiceover, tells us how he came upon the material for his novel, which is also called "The Grand Budapest Hotel." In 1968 he met a mysterious elderly occupant of the hotel, Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), who turned out to have been the lobby boy at the hotel in the 1930s. (Moustafa's younger self is played by Tony Revolori.) Moustafa, in turn, tells the author about the hotel's heyday and his boss, the suave concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and their adventures together involving wealthy widows, stolen artworks, fascist goons and even a prison break.