Step through the doors of The Grand Budapest Hotel and you are in for a 5-star treat. Set in a deluxe spa hotel occupying an imaginary corner of Central Europe between the wars, Wes Anderson’s film pampers the viewer with its sumptuous visual delights, sparkling dialogue and absurdly enjoyable comic intrigue. It also offers an exquisitely funny lead performance from Ralph Fiennes as the dapper concierge who presides over the hotel with unflappable aplomb, even when he and his lobby boy (Tony Revolori) are thrust into a perilous caper involving murder, art theft, a staggeringly large family fortune and a charming rogues gallery of familiar faces in supporting roles including Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton and Bill Murray. Not everyone will be tempted over the threshold, but lovers of the director’s defiantly idiosyncratic oeuvre will want to check in again and again.
Certificate 15. Runtime 100 mins. Director Wes Anderson.
Released on Blu-ray & DVD on Monday 7th July by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment..
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