I went to see The Grand Budapest Hotel last night. After Moonrise Kingdom, which may be a perfect movie, I was excited. I purposefully didn’t read anything about the movie beforehand. I didn’t want to spoil the experience with other’s opinions.
I really enjoyed the visuals in the movie. I loved set pieces and design of the hotel. There’s some bits of humor that aren’t overt I really enjoyed. The bits of animation and models were fun and flowed nicely in the story.
But the story…
It was OK. Very predictable. Didn’t really have a good ending. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Edward Norton was a throw away character that could have been played by anyone.
I really liked Willem DaFoe’s character. He reminded me a lot of his performance in Boondock Saints. I like how Tilda Swinton was used. I enjoyed Jeff Goldblum being less… Jeff Goldblumy.
But in the end, any of the characters could have died, or been forgotten about and I wouldn’t have missed them. The story didn’t evoke any emotion in me. It was an interesting story. But not exciting and told very rigidly. The actors gave rigid performances. But that seemed to be the point.
The story was built around the visuals of the movie. But visuals alone do not make a good movie.