THE FRENCH DISPATCH (2021) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Wes Anderson
Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Adrien Brody,
Benicio Del Toro, Timothée Chalomet, Léa Seydoux,
Tilda Swinton, Jeffrey Wright, Owen Wilson,
Mathieu Amalric, Lyna Khoudri, Steve Park,
Saoirse Ronan, Liev Schreiber, Willem Dafoe,
Edward Norton, Christoph Waltz, Bob Balaban,
Henry Winkler, Jason Schwarzmann, Cecile de France
A Wes Anderson movie centered (or scattered) around a magazine that vaguely resembles the New Yorker. Anderson's style is so distinctive, and by now so widely recognized, that his movies are practically spoofs of themselves, and this one is unequivocally a Wes Anderson movie. Arty, literate, inventive and deadpan funny, it's a high-brow piece of work that both appreciates and punctures the pretensions of the intellectual elite. Who else would even make a movie like this? Woody Allen maybe, but it wouldn't look the same. The ever-expanding Wes Anderson stock company turns out in force, and like some other Anderson films, it's one that might get better with repeated viewings. Whether you're a fan, or indifferent, or think he's finally just gotten too precious and cute, it can't hurt to be thankful that somebody so smart and idiosyncratic can get to make movies at all.
