Brandon did a cool piece on "The Darjeeling Limited" a few weeks ago, so rather than enter the depths of unbiased critical analysis he took, I'm going to be a raging cunt.
...What a piece of shit. Even more disappointing because I liked "Bottle Rocket", "Rushmore", and "The Royal Tenenbaums", and the same charm to all of Anderson's movies was still prevalent here. Here's the rub: He's lost it.
A shame, the guy had a voice. He has a style both childlike and full of heavy adult themes. Ever since Rushmore, the very techniques and set designs he uses feel unreal, everything is a giant, amazing primary color diorama, almost like a pop-up book when it came to the disappointing "Life Aquatic with Steve Zizzou". The aesthetic was perfect, and that is still there in "...Darjeeling...". Beef? Useless movie. All of the irony Anderson uses, which I think Brandon discussed, falls flat. There's a strange fake feel to his films, the acting is rarely emotional in an "actor" way, and there's this constant winking in the films sometimes, like you're watching a play, really. Makes sense, considering the sets, that all of his films feel that way, grand filmed fleshed-out high school plays with great (until recently) writing.
This movie, despite it's undeniable charms and my bias towards Jason Schwartzman, seriously goes nowhere. From having Bill Murray in the film doing nothing (seeing to be there just to incite discussions of why the fuck he's there, making the film more "important") to the overuse of those goddamn slow-motion music montages of late 60's/70's rock (seriously, shit needs to stop), it's all bad. There's literally four slow-motion music scenes, a new record I think, and they were all goddamn unnecessary and killed the pacing and impeded on the experience. Also, only one of those songs was actually really good, the one repeated throughout "Hotel Chevalier", which is notable for really great asshole dialogue from Schwartzman and Natalie Portman nude minus nipples/bush.
It says something that the fault of the movie is not really going anywhere and being completely Anderson-by-numbers and predictable, rather than being awful. Christian hated all of the actual camera direction and thought the dialogue was flat, so I'll take his word on that. I've never been to a movie where I saw a hipster leave and loudly proclaim, "That sucked!" while doing the ol' "comment-under-my-breath-as-I-cough". The moment that inspired this comment, and made me suggest to Christian that we egg this twee bastards house is the Whitman brothers discarding of both their physical and emotional baggage at the end of the film.
GET IT? BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T LET GO OF THEIR DAD'S LUGGAGE, AND THE BAGGAGE OF HIS DEATH AND ESTRANGEMENT WITH THEMSELVES AND THEIR MOTHER!!! GET IT!!! SYMBOLISM!!!!
That one-two combo nullified any potential and likability or urge to ever view it again. This twee bullshit. This indie tripe. This self-fellating-Robocop 3-Sufjan Stevens cuckoldry. This dilated cervix of a gaping craw of fail.
As twee as "The Decemberists: The Movie" was, it's still somehow better than "Resident Evil 3" and "30 Days of Night". After "Transformers" and "300" made millions, I gave up. I'm watching "Walk Hard" and calling it a year.
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