POSITIVES…
Love the narrative structure of this film being an anthology of different visualized stories based on tales written about the fictional French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé. The interestingly distinct characters, the world building, to the cleverly written dialogue, makes this quite a charming film.
Visually this movie is a delight to watch. The deliberate framing of the scenes, the quaint settings, “live” still shots, animated sequences, to the fact that it looks like I’m watching a stage play with the most elaborate sets ever. The switching between aspect ratios also worked really well for this film.
I really enjoyed the amusing, witty, sharp, tongue in cheek, sometimes cartoony sense of humor that is actually done in a subtle way that made me chuckle multiple times. Liked those visual gags too.
There’s a certain uniquely unexpected randomness to certain sequences that entertained me a lot, and only made me even more excited to see what else this film is going to show me.
The cast. The ensemble cast. The ohmigod this is a huge cast of actors with brief roles! Gotta give some stand-out kudos to Benicio del Toro, Léa Seydoux, Adrien Brody, Frances McDormand, Lyna Khoudri, and Jeffrey Wright. Fantastic work by all!
NEGATIVES…
It’s easy to criticize a Wes Anderson movie as being somewhat pretentious, overly quirky, a bit precious, too intellectual, kinda elitist, pretty artsy, and just full of itself. This film can check all those boxes if this isn’t your cup of tea.
I get the reasoning behind switching between color and black & white, but wow there’s a lot of black & white in this one. I wouldn’t complain so much if it wasn’t for the fact that the scenes with color are beautifully colorful to look at, and I wanted more of that.
Your results may vary, but out of the three main stories, I loved the first one the most. This unfortunately means that I liked the rest of the movie slightly less than the beginning parts. Not that much less mind you, but it just didn’t quite live up to what I loved from that first act.
In “Revisions to a Manifesto – by Lucinda Krementz,” just about all the cast surrounding Timothée Chalamet’s and Frances McDormand’s characters are speaking in French (with english captions). I get why McDormand has to speak in English, but it honestly kinda bothered me and took me out of the movie whenever Chalamet continued to speak in English during conversations that clearly should be fully in French. Chalamet is fluent in French ain’t he? We Anderson, why did you make that choice?!
You prudes will probably balk at the nudity that’s featured in this film. Especially those full frontal ones.
lovedit ENJOYED IT likedititsokayitsmehitsterrible
