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The Grand Budapest Hotel Movie Review

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a 2014 comedy film directed by Wes Anderson and starring Ralph Fiennes. This is a typical Anderson movie – strange and annoying.

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“Keep your hands off my lobby boy!“

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Gustave H, a concierge, is wrongly framed for murder at the Grand Budapest Hotel. In the process of proving his innocence, he befriends a lobby boy. There is no plot to speak of here. There is the framing of the murder and the chase and hiding, but for the most part this is once again style over substance for this highly frustrating director who literally makes the same movie over and over again.

Almost nothing here worked. There are some funny lines of dialogue, or amusing at best to be precise, and the central concierge-lobby boy relationship was actually well developed and charming, but the movie overall has no thematic resonance or purpose to it.

It features an incredibly large number of characters, all played by these great actors ranging from Willem Dafoe to Adrien Brody to Saiorse Ronan to Jeff Goldblum even. But the problem is that they are all simply a fleeting presence that barely constitutes a cameo, let alone a role. They were wasted entirely on such unfortunate roles.

Tony Revolori is quite memorable himself and the character worked, but even though Ralph Fiennes was excellent and believable in the main role, I found Gustave rather annoying. But again, the dynamic between the two worked, and is the only thing in the film that worked out well, discounting the technicalities.

Speaking of the latter, The Grand Budapest Hotel definitely looks lovely. The titular hotel is instantly iconic with the color pink being particularly memorable. The interiors are intriguing, the costumes are great and the score is also wonderful.

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However, strong audio-visuals do not make a movie great, but a plot, characters and emotion and/or themes. None of those can be found here. The movie is very short, but it still felt too long as it was honestly boring to me and incredibly annoying, leading to what was a frustrating viewing experience. Wes Anderson once again cluttered the movie with so many details, but none of it mattered at the end of the day, leading to what is a highly undeserved multiple Oscar nominee.

I hate Wes Anderson and his dumb, annoying movies. The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of his many weird films that favor style over substance. It is strange for the sake of being strange while the plot, characterization and meaning are nowhere to be found. The production design, costumes and score are all lovely. Some of the performances and characters worked too. However, most of these great actors were reduced to what is basically a cameo, the strong visual style led to the overwhelming clutter and denseness, and thus the movie felt boring, frustrating and pointless. A giant waste of time.

My Rating – 2.5