"The Darjeeling Limited"

Anyone catch this, the new Wes Anderson flick? I can't decide if it's a genuine improvement over "Life Aquatic"'s self-indulgences or not. At least he's working with different writers -- I love Noah Baumbach but his newfound love affair with plotless-verité-family angst is in direct contrast with Anderson's tightly wound character study-hyperreal-family angst. I keep trying to find point of entries to criticizing it fairly but I come out where I started. ie,

- "Darjeeling" wasn't funny enough. But is it a comedy?

- Anderson is starting to repeat himself. But Eric Rohmer once made the same movie 6 times and each version was great (with the possible exception of entry 4). Furthermore, I'd rather see Anderson re-treading tried and true ground than branching out and falling flat.

- The film seems to taper off at the end and "resolve" issues for the sake of resolving them.

Actually, that last one's a keeper. Then again how can I argue with a film that visually and narratively quotes "Black Narcissus" and has a tiger puppeteer credited?

I think it's interesting there are so many movies out about India. I haven't seen "The Darjeeling Limited" yet, but I saw "Outsourced" which I was very pleasantly surprised by. It toes the line between being a sweet romantic comedy and actually making one think seriously about the sociopoliticoeconomic impact of outsourcing on culture and way of life. The Life Aquatic is one of my favorite movies, I can't wait to see Darjeeling. I'm not sure I need it to be a comedy, but I don't want it to be yet another male midlife crisis story.

It was ok if you have the patience to put in the time. Like many of andersons movies, you have commit to the movie. The only problem is that sometimes you end up watching a movie made by a person whom is in love with his filmaking or you end up with a memorable movie. Darjeeling seems to be the latter, but i was in a good mood while watching it

It was fair. Not the greatest film. The acting was a little stale. It could've improved in some ways.

Originally posted by DARKLORDCAEDUS
It was fair. Not the greatest film. The acting was a little stale. It could've improved in some ways.

do you think that is intentional on Andersons part? because the performances from the actors in all of his movies always seem to be stale or withdrawn

Originally posted by ragesRemorse
do you think that is intentional on Andersons part? because the performances from the actors in all of his movies always seem to be stale or withdrawn

Yes I would have to put the blame on Wes Anderson.

Originally posted by DARKLORDCAEDUS
Yes I would have to put the blame on Wes Anderson.

i wasnt insisting that it is a bad thing. I think the direction over his actors worked very well with rushmore and royal tenenbaums. Im not sure that those movies would have worked as well without a sense of distance. I'm just not sure whether that is a choice by the actors due to an influence from the script or a decesion by Anderson. I believe he thinks it gives his movies a more realistic feel. I think Darjeeling would have benefited more had the cast had more say in their portrayel...,assuming they didnt

Originally posted by ragesRemorse
i wasnt insisting that it is a bad thing. I think the direction over his actors worked very well with rushmore and royal tenenbaums. Im not sure that those movies would have worked as well without a sense of distance. I'm just not sure whether that is a choice by the actors due to an influence from the script or a decesion by Anderson. I believe he thinks it gives his movies a more realistic feel. I think Darjeeling would have benefited more had the cast had more say in their portrayel...,assuming they didnt

I agree with you.

Yes, I agree with the last few posts as well. Anderson's specialty is cardboard cut-outs that we accept because their situations are fairly entertaining and, though they're cardboard, they're cut pretty well, very precisely. He makes dioramas, like those in the museum that Margot and Richie Tenenbaum hide out in. I think the films are less effective when he tries to widen his scope. ie, Life Aquatic. 3-D sets and issues with 2-D characters, which was about as jarring as you'd expect from that configuration.

Oh well, it's the best movie I've seen since ESotSM.

I saw it. I thought it was ok, not nearly the charm of Life Aquatic. It's interesting because i'm writing a review for Outsourced which is also about India so I've been looking at the way that India is portrayed in films very carefully lately - and I felt like even though Darjeeling Limited had a larger budget than Outsourced it didn't do as well at showing India for India - it looked more like a sound stage or film set to me.