Tom Lewis

After watching the trailer, I was very interested, even excited to see this film. I'm a fan of art house cinema, foreign film, and interesting, challenging, unusual film. As an example, 'The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover' still stand out and stand up as one of my all time favorites after three decades have passed. There are many more such films that venture into edgier realms of movie making that I've seen and enjoyed enormously. The French Dispatch is NOT one of them. Unfortunately, the 90-second trailer is vastly more successful and entertaining than the remaining, meandering, disconnected, disjointed, insultingly long 138-minute marathon that I forced myself to sit through. Giving credit where due, the visuals are stunning with a soft palette of pastels interspersed with high contrast bursts of black and white. There is even an animated sequence toward the end that adds visual variety. Also, kudos to Anderson for assembling a truly impressive ensemble cast that just kept coming and surprising. For me, (and not just for me, my housemate expressed the same) these were the only two high points of the film; cinematography and casting. Beyond that, I struggle for words to describe how searingly bad this film is. Perhaps I read it wrong, but in terms of storyline and narrative arc the final product is a mess of quirky and often bad and nonsensical ideas cobbled together with the ostensible hope of creating some kind of cohesive whole. Was this some weak attempt as surrealism? A nod to Dada? What the Hell was this? If the intended goal was to try and test the patience of an audience eager to see something "different", to challenge, or even illicit angry, confused, irritated responses from views perhaps it's a success on that level, but as good, witty, intellectually stimulating, satisfying film, it's an abysmal failure. More likely, this strikes me as bad dream after a late-night drunken party that was frantically written down the following morning during a nasty hang over. I went in open, ready, and eager to be taken for an entertaining ride with unexpected twists and turns. I wanted to like this film. I TRIED to like this film, but this was NOT it. It was more like a boring rollercoaster from Hell from which I wanted to extricate myself but couldn't until it was over. I sat through it hoping that there would be some amazing, incredible conclusion that would make the trip worthwhile. Nope. To each his own, I suppose. I'm sure there is an audience for The French Dispatch and there certainly is for Wes Anderson films. Clearly, I am not part of that audience.