Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

As Wes Anderson movies have progressed, they've taken on a distinctively unique style separate from everybody else currently making films.  I realize that saying "distinctively unique" is rather redundant, but for some reason it feels particularly accurate with Anderson.  Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, Joss Whedon, and Kevin Smith are all unique in the types of films they produce, but it's not to say that someone couldn't come along and do a passable facsimile.  Aside from Bottle Rocket, his first (and honestly, rather forgettable in comparison) film, Anderson's unique touches of work seem unreachable and undeniably his own, with nobody else coming close to doing anything like it.

There's an old joke in Hollywood that the five stages of fame are (let's use Cameron Diaz as an example):

"Who's Cameron Diaz?"

"Get me Cameron Diaz."

"Get me someone like Cameron Diaz."

"Get me a younger Cameron Diaz."

"Who was Cameron Diaz?"

Wes Anderson appears to have shot past the "Who's Wes Anderson?" stage and is dragging the second one well into the third as Hollywood struggles to find the next "him."

His most recent film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is so "Andersonian" that I actually had to just make up that word to appropriately describe it, but I'll attempt to go into more detail.