Structured like a New Yorker zine and just as wryly smug and pandering to the self-proclaimed intelligentsia, The French Dispatch is an ego-driven misfire for visionary director Wes Anderson who has done little more than projectile vomit his signature quirk on the screen in thick gobs, forgetting to actually make a movie along the way.

Boasting a cast list that includes a literal who’s who of the most respected working actors today, The French Dispatch is overbearing on nearly every level. Less a movie than a 108-minute stream of verbose consciousness set to primary colors, Anderson’s least accessible movie to date designs to tell a collection of stories from a fictionalized ex-pat magazine (the titular French Dispatch) based in the fictionalized French city of Ennui, with a wrap-around story about the death of the magazine’s respected publisher Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray).

At first glance, it’s Anderson 101, complete with an upbeat (and somewhat uninspired?) score from Alexandre Desplat, fussy, boxy Art Nouveau set design, whimsical segmenting of the film into chapters – with all varieties of random plot interruptions and asides – and dry, tight humor. The trouble sets in as soon as the initial superficial charm of being back in Anderson’s stylistic mind dissipates. One realizes quickly that Anderson just seems to be showing off. Like being stuck in a conversation with a conceited showman listing off their accomplishments, it’s all so deathly boring.

The film bounds between three disparate stories – one of an incarcerated emerging modern artist (Benicio Del Toro) and his prison guard-cum-muse Simone (Léa Seydoux) as a group of art dealers led by Adrien Brody plot to popularize and sell his work; another focuses on a youth revolution led by the student Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) as journalist Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) covers the breaking story, all whist sleeping with her subject; the final chapter turns to a eidetic food journalist (Jeffrey Wright) whose plot to sample a renown chef’s work is sidelined by a kidnapping plot.

Also to appear is Owen Wilson as a bicycling reporter, Tilda Swinton as a lisping arts professor, Liev Schreiber as a talk show host, Edward Norton as a criminal chauffeur, Anjelica Huston in voiceover, and Mathieu Amalric as a paternal police commissaire. Then there are folks like Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe, Rupert Friend, Jason Schwartzman, Henry Winkler, and Bob Balaban who have so little bearing on the story it’s a wonder they appear at all. Further still, generational talents Christoph Waltz and Elisabeth Moss each show up for literally one line each. Anderson’s command over the thespian world has indeed grown beyond control.

[READ MORE: Our review of Wes Anderson’s ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel‘ starring Ralph Fiennes]

With so many various tendrils of cutesy story weaving around and battling for attention, The French Dispatch becomes more a series of character introductions than anything resembling a traditional narrative. Even the little stories within the stories find themselves interrupted by further stories. The jumble – which is designed to unfold like the finest prose – instead plays like a loose memory or bad dream. The plot gets lost in the weeds very early on,  never to find its way out, Anderson busying himself with flourish after flourish at the expense of anything that might be confused for an instance for substance.

Add Wes Anderson to the list of beloved writer-directors who have become rudderless as they’re grown beyond their breaches; who have become inoculated to critique; immune to any compulsion to reign things in. Another esteemed visionary completely undone by insufficient editing and a studio unwilling to tell him to pull back. Believe me when I say folks that The French Dispatch is a bad film. At times charmed but almost always impenetrable. Dreadful even.

[READ MORE: Our review of Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated feature ‘Isle of Dogs‘]

An utterly perplexing non-story, The French Dispatch opts to be an homage to a certain breed of bygone essayist. The script – also from Anderson, working with story ideas from Schwartzman, Roman Coppola, and Hugo Guinness – is a wordy, jargony flight of fancy, so peculiar and prose-driven as to essentially drive out any kind of natural dialogue. The result feels like Anderson has assembled one of the best living casts to film a series of strange, self-indulgent essays, none of which are particularly interesting nor illuminate anything about human nature or the artist himself. It is self-indulgence to the point of self-parody; an ego overlooking the horizon from the comfort of an infinity pool searching only for its reflection. Why the movie would attempt to emulate a compilation of essays, I have no idea. Anderson has offered no suiting answer either but nonetheless roars with the misplaced confidence of a stuffy blowhard.

CONCLUSION: Almost unwatchable as a narrative endeavor, ‘The French Dispatch’ confuses Wes Anderson’s artificial idiosyncrasies with actual storytelling. Truly narcissist, this cutesy, quirky compilation squanders an excellent cast as the forest becomes entirely overwhelmed by the trees in suffocating manner. His worst film by a yardstick.

D+

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