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User Reviews for: The Grand Budapest Hotel

CatyAlexandre
10/10  10 years ago
Well, I do not even know where to start! The Grand Budapest Hotel was one of my most anticipated films this year. My expectations were very high and I can say it exceeded everything I was expecting.

Wes Anderson is a very peculiar and original director, there is no one like him and his style is unmistakable. With an interesting filmography is great to see his improvement over the years. This film is a good example of that. All his usual filming techniques, color palette, the history, quirky characters and scenarios always full of details keep getting better with each film. I would like to give the main highlight for the set design that will get you literally gaping!

Wes Anderson wrote this film based on the books of a writer named Stefan Zweig and the entire universe that he created around this story is absolutely fabulous! The Grand Budapest Hotel is a famous hotel in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka in the European Alps. In it we follow the adventures of the important concierge Gustave H. and his recent apprentice Zero Moustafa, who go far beyond the Grand Budapest. Gustave H. has the particularity to like seducing older and wealthy hotel guests. After years of involvement with one of these ladies, she is murdered and Gustave is the prime suspect of her murder. Then it starts all this great, crazy and hilarious mess!

Ralph Fiennes shines in this film, his performance is magnificent as the concierge Gustave H. In each scene he enters he steals the show! His performance is the one with the most spotlight but he is always supported by a whole cast that play their roles genially. The young and recent actor Tony Revolori is also very good and all the scenes between him and Ralph Fiennes are wonderful, the two had a great chemistry and that is transmited beyond the screen. Big names like F. Murray Abraham, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Tom Wilkinson and many others are all excellent in their small roles and sometimes we wished to see this talented names have a little more time on screen but each one has its importance in history.

Fun, colorful, with great dialogues and hilarious scenes, also leaving an important message about loyalty and friendship. Wes Anderson now elevates the bar very high, after this brilliant The Grand Budapest Hotel we are waiting to see what this great and unique filmmaker will do next. I think I can say that this happens to be my favorite film of him, because I think it is definitely his best and will also certainly be one of my favorites this year.
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Reply by t23
10 years ago
Well put, Caty. I watched it last night and i just sat there and smiled like i did with Moonrise Kingdom and Wes's other movies. I'm a bit sad that Wes drags in his fave actors just to put them in tiny roles, but on the other hand, Fiennes can carry his own<br /> <br /> Great to see yet another weird-but-feelgood movie from Wes Anderson. Not his best, but it had me smiling for the whole length of it - a thing that only a few movies can do.
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Reply by CatyAlexandre
10 years ago
Thank you :)<br /> <br /> I'm glad that you loved it too! I love Wes Anderson's films, I think he is a very unique and original director.<br /> <br /> Ralph Fiennes did an excellent job. I would love to see him nominated for his performance next year but unfortunately I don't if there will be a chance...<br /> <br /> What is your favorite Wes Anderson film?
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Andres Gomez
/10  6 years ago
Yet another well crafter Wes Anderson's movie. Fiennes and Revolori perform well and the amount of well known actors and actresses is incredible but we have seen similar ways and scripts in his previous movies.

It's entertaining, though.
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CRCulver
/10  6 years ago
Wes Anderson's THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is the director's celebration of Central Europe culture and fashion in the years between the World Wars, and an elegy for what was lost with the rise of fascism and communism. Set in 1932 in a fictional country called Zubrowka, the streets, military regalia and (ersatz) German names we are shown could have come from anywhere between Germany and Estonia. Its protagonist Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) is a concierge at the eponymous luxury hotel, the splendour of which disappeared, we are told, with World War II. Gustave H. is known publicly as one of the best concierges in the business, able to dash around the hotel at lightning speed to satisfy the most varied guests of the elite clientele. Privately, he's a rake with a rather foul mouth, and fond of bedding the rich old women who patronize the establishment. When one of those old ladies, Madame Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis (Tilda Swinton) dies and Gustave is framed for her murder, he must evade the law and unmask the true culprit, with the help of newly hired lobby boy Zero Mustafa (Tony Revolori).

The films of Wes Anderson are known for their immense visual detail, and THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is no exception. The elaborate framing of shots, the myriad cute items to look at on every set, and the architectural detail are like a diorama blown up to the big screen. Curiously, that visual detail is matched to a real slackness in the human characterization. Anderson has brought in a large number of actors he had worked with before, including Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Ed Norton, and Bill Murray, for roles that range from the main villain to little more than cameos. These characters are never fleshed out like Gustave H. or Zero Mustafa, and the actors don't even try to pass themselves off as Central Europeans from the entre deux guerres. Instead Adrien Brody plays Adrien Brody, etc.

There are two supporting roles that I felt were stronger. William Defoe plays a nearly mute henchman whose look is a nod to early vampire films (Transylvania was Central Europe, too). More remarkable is Harvey Keitel's turn as an old prisoner: when so many handsome leading men try to hide the effects of time after they enter their sunset years, 75-year-old Keitel was not afraid to show the ravages of old age here.

Unfortunately, I found the 21st-century Americans strutting about (and a few speaking in rough New York accents) in a historical drama to be jarring. I was also disappointed by the resort to Hollywood tropes here, when Anderson's earlier films managed to be very quirky and sui generis. For example, did we really need not just one scene where a character is hanging off a cliff's edge as the villain stands over him, but two? And the amount of plot details that are introduced but never really explained makes one feel that the work was subject to some heavy cuts to please a studio.

Still, if you liked Wes Anderson's earlier films, you'll find much to enjoy in his dollhouse approach, and it is amazing how every one of his films has a completely new and fresh visual theming even if his quasi-autistic obsession with prettiness never changes. Another thing I liked about the film is its "story within a story within a story". The entire plot of Gustave H. is, we are shown, taken from a fictionalized treatment by a writer who met a middle-aged Mustafa (F. Murray Abraham) in the 1960s. Befitting this novelistic layer -- and the work of Stefan Zweig that Anderson credits for inspiration -- this framing story is written in stilted, unrealistic dialogue like an old-time novel. And the aspect ratio changes for each layer of the film, a little treat for cinema anoraks.
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