The maddening Darjeeling Limited

In keeping with Wes Anderson’s recent trajectory, The Darjeeling Limited is maddening. There are, as always, moments when you feel you’re watching the work of an indisputable genius; unfortunately, those moments are tempered, and occasionally overwhelmed, by long stretches of inane chatter and reflexive quirkiness. Stylistically the film is a thing of beauty, with India’s vibrant colors providing much for Anderson’s widescreen lens to capture. But as in The Royal Tennebaums and, most glaringly, The Life Aquatic, that style is squandered on a story that refuses to move beyond a superficial sheen.

That’s not to say that The Darjeeling Limited is a bad movie—it’s half bad, with its sharp first reels gradually undermined by the creeping feeling that Anderson, along with his co-writers Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, are unconcerned with where they lead us. Following three estranged brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, and Schwartzman) on “some sort of spiritual quest” through India, the film’s early moments onboard the cramped Darjeeling Limited rail line are strange and wonderful. Each brother is damaged—whether emotionally or, in Wilson’s case, physically—and their interplay suggests hilarious depth yet to be explored.

Once the boys are sent off the train, however, The Darjeeling Limited can’t help but disintegrate. Reaching, jarringly, for tragedy in the third act, the film’s descent to earth is botched, completely failing to earn the emotional manipulation it forces on us. Anderson obviously wants to grow up as a filmmaker (in the first scene he leaves Bill Murray and, presumably, his previous films, behind at the station), but just like his characters, he’s unwilling to put in the work to achieve that goal. By the time the brothers literally shed their baggage, all you’re left with is quirkiness masking as spiritual reckoning. If that’s the point, it’s no longer funny.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED DIR. WES ANDERSON | RATED R | AT THEATERS EVERYWHERE

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