The Grand Budapest Hotel (***1/4)

For those who know the films of Wes Anderson (Rushmore, , Moonrise Kingdom, The ), there is scarcely any point in reviewing them other than in relation to each other. You already know if you’ll like this, or you haven’t seen Anderson’s work. [A recent Saturday Night Live parody, in the form of a horror movie trailer, is hilarious and specific in a way that, say, a Steven Spielberg parody could probably not have been.] Whether set on a train in India (The Darjeeling Unlimited), in the poshest parts of New York (The Royal Tenenbaums), or inside animated tunnels (The Fantastic Mr. Fox), they all seem to take place in a half-real, half fairy-tale world of pastel colors, secret passageways, and Rube Goldberg-inspired plots. His heroes are the verbose but well-meaning, like the middle-aged concierge Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his young protegé Zero (Tony Revolori) at the center of this period piece.

It does not take place in Budapest but in Lutz, a fictional city in a fictional Eastern European country where people mostly speak English in a variety of accents, but mostly English and American. It is supposed to be 1932, which only matters insofar as it conjures up a world in which conflict and even modernity lie ahead. Technically, it is the late 1960s; the story is told by an older man (F. Murray Abraham) to a younger one (Jude Law), and this only matters insofar as it depicts the 1930s elegance as having long past, the hotel in a long, slow decline, its past  as mythical seeming as a fairy tale, though the cavernous lobby remains.

Save perhaps the anti-climactic ending, the plotting here, involving the mysterious death of an elderly guest, is clever and fun. As always, the humor comes at odd moments and in unexpected ways. For me, one such moment was when Zero is surprised to learn that one way Gustave satisfied his elderly female guests was by sleeping with them. His mentor explains that when you are young “it’s all fillet steak…but as you get older, you have to move on to the cheaper cuts.” Gustave adds that he likes the cheaper cuts. There’s no meanness in Anderson’s heroes, though this movie has a pair of villains.

Anderson is apt to quickly jettison both heroes and villains from his story. For me, his previous movie, Moonrise Kingdom, had an emotional center that differentiated it from his other work, though perhaps that was an individual response. Maybe the tale of an old man recalling his long-ago mentor and long-ago life will bring a similar nostalgia to some people. For others, it will be another solid effort by one of Hollywood’s most distinct voices.

IMDb link

viewed 3/26/14 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 3/26/14