Review of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by Scraper — 21 Jul 2020

Packed wall to wall with famous, talented actors whom are completely suffocated by the rigidity of the direction of the film. No scenes are allowed to breath and let people be themselves. They are on a constant stopwatch of when they are allowed to speak and when they are not; when they are allowed to move and when they must hold in place. Most camera shots are are taken head-on and when actors move on screen they do so in straight lines. It's so unnatural that it makes me nauseous. I hate the masturbatory intro that doesn't get to the actual story without introducing us to a few oddball characters first. Andersen's films are always populated by the most random strange characters that don't work. That's what kills me so much about the quirky characters is that they are completely random when they should be in a spectrum - relating to one another but even employees of a hotel are all in a totally different mindset from one another as if they grew up in all corners of the world. That sounds fun on paper but in a movie its so jerky in your mind and gives the impression that the filmmaker doesn't care about cohesion at all. He's just populating a world with whomever and letting them say whatever. Edward Norton both in Moonrise and GBH takes a marked step away from masculine which is off-putting. It comes off as a step back. None of these characters seem foreign either. It really does seem like a bunch of Americans just saying their lines.

Of course it wouldn't be a Wes Andersen movie without some weird under-age sexual attraction that completely distances me. I'm tired of mustaches, for gods sake. Mustaches do not make a character interesting. Sometimes, like most elements in this movie, it just seems tacked on in the hopes that it adds depth. Suffice to say I hated this movie.