(Not So) Grand Budapest Hotel

Grand Budapest squandered a great Ralph Fiennes performance.

Are you kidding me? This is one the highest-rated, best-reviewed movies of the year? A quick visit to Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes makes me feel as if I've clicked over to an alternate universe where an overly precious and self-regarding mediocrity like Wes Anderson's latest is seen as one of the year's top three or four films. During the first third of the film, I felt that Budapest was living up to the hype, largely on the strength of the Ralph Fiennes character, a pleasing and unprecedented blend of sophistication, vulgarity, and undefined, or at least unusual, sexuality. Then the second half of the movie descends into an interminable parade of pointless plot machinations, overloaded and way-too-cute Wes Anderson visuals, and ill-conceived cameos. What's the point of having the likes of Jeff Goldblum, Willem Defoe, and Bill Murray in your film if they are going to be boring? I think we were supposed to be pleased simply by the fact that they and a bunch of other Anderson regulars showed up. Let me put it another way, about halfway in my wife picked up the iPad and started mindlessly surfing the web. If they had kept the focus on Fiennes as a character worthy of depth and development, the whole thing would have been much, much stronger. 2 1/2 stars.