PREMISE
Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins.
THE GOOD STUFF
THE AESTHETIC- Ain’t much I can say about the Wes Anderson aesthetic that hasn’t already been repeated a hundred times, but it’s still worth saying. You can’t help but respect how ornate the presentations of his films always have been. All of them are beautiful films to look at, and are incredible works of art. When paired with an entertaining story, his films are second to none. The aesthetic remains almost relaxing to observe every single time to me.
DEL TORO- As strange as it may sound, Benicio Del Toro hasn’t had a showcasing leading role in a major motion picture in quite some time. Sure, he’s been working plenty, but it’s been in these blink-and-you-miss-it releases, things you never really even heard of, or mid-level profile films. You’d probably have to go back to SICARIO 2 to find the last time he headlined a film. It’s not as if I had forgotten how good he is or anything like that; I just forgot what he looked like.
Del Toro is a very rugged leading man, which makes his entire performance in this film all the more hilarious. His character Zsa-Zsa Korda is all deadman delivery, and plastic-faced responses to the goofiness that’s happening around him. Del Toro nails every aspect of this performance. And he’s funnier when he’s not speaking than when he is speaking. And that’s more of a compliment than anything else. He’s excellent in this film.
THE BAD STUFF
WASTED TALENT?- I’ve always marveled at how Wes Anderson films can acclimate to the amount of A-listers and world-class character actors on such a consistent basis. I love the fact that amidst all these established A-listers, he will have somebody who has rarely been heard of in a major role, presumably so that they can get some shine next to the big dogs. (like Mia Threapleton in this film)
The issue with this, however, is that there isn’t enough material to cover the talent of the actors being displayed. Hell, given the cast of this film, you could probably write a two-and-a-half-hour movie and run into the same problem. This is an ongoing problem with everything Wes Anderson has done post-Grand Budapest Hotel, and it will likely be a recurring theme throughout the rest of his work.
THE DIALOGUE – A common problem in Anderson’s recent work is that every single character is consistently multisyllabic. So many people are talking a mile a minute, and so much can go over your head. Nothing feels organic. It is almost as if the actual dialogue is intended to be as quirky as possible, rather than sounding organic.
THE UGLY STUFF
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In my humble opinion, there are two Wes Anderson eras: everything before the Grand Budapest hotel… and everything after. The Grand Budapest hotel is the magnum opus of Wes Anderson so far, and it’s one of the best films of the decade in which it was released. It’s the first film to maximize the stylistic choices of Anderson fully, and it’s also the first to inhabit all of the bad traits of every Wes Anderson film that’s been released since then. With Grand Budapest, the big cast of notable names didn’t take away from the story itself, because the story was still centered around one figure.
Everything since THE GRAND BUDAPEST has not focused on one figure, it’s been more centered on…….. a lot of characters all at once. And it’s not terrible or anything like that, but it’s nowhere close to the pre-Grand Budapest greatness. The Phoenician scheme falls under this category, but it’s the best post-Grand Budapest movie that he’s done.Â
THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME is in theaters now