Review of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by Timothy N — 02 Oct 2015

You get about 5 seconds thorough a Wes Anderson movie and straight away you just know it's that sly guy with his unique style. The Grand Budapest Hotel is Andersons little project here and one that is hugely entertaining as well, mixing humour with wit and love with surrealism, this movie truly contains a lot of different things. The story is about Gustave H a hotel manager of the place in the title, but it is not through his eyes we see the story no, it is F. Murray Abraham well no it is the character of Zero Moustafa a small hotel concierge who is hired by Gustave and quickly rises up to be a star player in the running of the hotel. The plot throws in twists and turns, characters that only Anderson could make up and at one point a shoot-out between a group of people who have no idea who they are shooting(sounds pretty mixed up right). The one thing that stops this being pretentious or anything along those lines is that it is funny, thoughtful but also just generally made up well, it never tries to make you think "Oh cool" but you can at times feel that, but it doesn't feel forced.

The movie contains so many actors it is near impossible to count how many big names or recognisable faces this movie contains. Gustave is played by an very on form Ralph Fiennes whose performance is both hilarious but also just generally well acted even dramatically speaking. We see the likes of Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Ed Norton, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray and even one of Anderson's absolute favourites, Jason Schwartzman. The strange thing is that among all the talent on show it is the young actor who portrays Zero who is maybe one of the most memorable and his name is Tony Revolori. Now I am not saying Revolori is that great I mean it really is Fiennes who steals the show acting wise, but Revolori does enough to make his character stick out and you can sort of in ways connect to him.

Straight from the side camera shots are just one of the many things we see so often in Wes Anderson's plethora of work. In this movie he adds in little miniature set pieces with little trees and buildings and also moving miniature figures and vehicles and really makes them look actually good and uses them to good effect too. The movie likes to move fast I mean after all it is fairly short, however the frantic pace does not make this any less of a great piece in fact if anything it makes the jokes funnier because they are so quick and snappy, at times the slight humour can drip out but in large quantities so it feels pretty nicely done. What Anderson also does so well is just make this feel so fresh and new, I mean to be fair who the hell as ever made a movie like this before but what Anderson brings to the table is more than fresh, it is fresh and really good mixing great characters who are likeable with really nice sets and Wes writes the thing well too, I mean I can definitely see why this got so many nominations at ceremonies across the world.

Is there much wrong? ,well I guess it could have been the slightest bit more laugh out loud at times but that doesn't matter, that isn't what this movie is all about. I think this is a sort of loveable movie but for sure is extremely likeable and I don't think only a certain "crowd" will like it, it has a little something for all to offer. One more thing I really need to say which I never went properly into is the production design especially the whole make up of the sets used, the sets used for the parts in the 30's are magnificent and some of the best I have ever seen in movies, I felt yet again Anderson's style creeping up in even the smallest of places.