Anderson, always fond of having a vast number of characters and wide-ranging ideas for them to voice, takes the next step and presents a portmanteau film about the American office of a fictitious periodical publication in a fictitious French town across an indeterminate time period. The aesthetics are impeccable, the cast of 'blink or you'll miss them cameos' are all commanding and the dialogues delivered by a succession of journalists and the subjects of their articles are crammed with verbiose wit. But all this comes at a cost. He forgot to include a unifying plot in all the excitement to fit everything in, and so we get a series of diverting vignettes instead, and thus a brief switch to animation in the third story comes as no surprise. He now needs to be told firmly that less can be more: Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel may also have been jam-packed with stars and flights of fancy as well, but were more rewarding for actually having a sense of going somewhere.
6/10
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