Room Service! Marxist (as in brothers) Mayhem at The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson is a fascinating cat. His films tend to feel more like novels than movies, with a particularly arch, almost Salingeresque sense of characters in the midst of junctures and upheaval. He's become something of a divisive director, which seems silly to me, as though Anderson's embrace of the eccentric was something to be shunned as being too deliberate.

I've seen about half of the Anderson catalog and particularly loved the whimsy of Fantastic Mr. Fox. With The Grand Budapest Hotel, it's as if Anderson finally embraced his more delirious tendencies and gave himself permission to remove the leash and let them range. The result is nothing short of delight and pure hysteria, in what feels like his most overtly farcical comedy to date.

Ralph Fiennes (criminally overlooked by Oscar) is M. Gustav, the panache-propelled concierge who's kept the "Grand" foremost in the reputation of the hotel's guests, deep in the mythical 1930's borderlands of Europe. Gustav's fondness for romancing dowager guests isn't purely mercenary, he just can't help himself. It's like being left-handed. He finds himself having to show new Lobby Boy Zero Mustafa the ropes of running the hotel just so, at nearly the same moment that one of his faded conquests meets her demise, launching the plot into motion like a giant meringue sliding across an ice rink.

The Europe of Grand Budapest Hotel is between World Wars, and the insistent prying of fascist police states is threatening to pull down the stones of the elegant era Gustav's always known. Caught up in crisis over the dowager's will and a hilarious portrait which he stands to inherit, Anderson sends Gustav and protege Zero hurtling into action, spurred by the divine guidance of The Marx Brothers.

The cast of Budapest is enormous and inspired. Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Willem Dafoe, Adrian Brody, Harvey Keitel, a smashing Jeff Goldblum - these are just a handful of the talents on hand to wreak character-fueled havoc within the hotel and without.

Anderson has created one of the most visually arresting comedies in recent memory, thanks to the truly spectacular cinematography of frequent collaborator Robert D. Yeoman, who treats both the environs and the faces of Budapest with equal parts fantastical awe. It's an amazing looking film with shot composition that makes you whistle, but that never gets in the way of the shenanigans.

The Grand Budapest Hotel carries the blush of a bygone era of comedy when audiences counted on Hollywood to give them escape that delivered laughter and the euphoria of elegance, a much needed combination to help forget about the hardships of the day. Wes Anderson playfully pinches that sophistication and bumps its hat off, while making sure that today's audiences get a joyful blast of that same exotic and unhinged sense of fun.