Quick Summary: A kooky and delightfully silly film, The Grand Budapest Hotel tells the story of a legendary hotel concierge and his lobby-boy protégé. An undertone of melancholy darkness lends the film surprising emotional depth. Enormously entertaining.

Title: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Release: 2014
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring:
Ralph Fiennes (Monsieur Gustave)
Tony Revolori (Zero)

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a delightfully odd film. It tells the story of hotel employees Zero (Tony Revolori), and M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), but it isn't a movie about a hotel. Rather, it is a movie about friendship, nostalgia, and the importance of love – and it is enormously entertaining. Come on, who wouldn't love a movie that tells its story using not one, not two, but three framing devices? And then goes on to tell a tale that you'd swear was an exemplar of magical realism, except there isn't any magic? I had such fun watching this.

The year is 1932 (well, sort of). In fictional Zubrowka, young Zero gets a job working at the finest hotel in the world – the Grand Budapest Hotel. His boss? the most famous concierge in the world, M. Gustave. Zero is young, naïve, and a little gauche. M. Gustave is suave almost to the point of sliminess, but runs the hotel with unparalleled grace. One of the hotel's regulars, an elderly woman who is also one of M. Gustave's lovers, dies suddenly. Zero and M. Gustave try to determine who murdered the elderly woman,while avoiding the Nazi-like “ZZ” soldiers overrunning the country.

The movie is full of bright colours, deftly gorgeous visual touches, and breakneck dialogue. What starts out as light, frothy fun gradually grows darker and more melancholy. This is a story about people who live in a wonderful world – but that world is coming to an end, quickly. The film starts as a comedy, but by the end, I was in tears.

The movie has a little of everything; it is funny, it is sad, it is thoughtful, and it is silly. And all this comes in a candy-coated package of cinematic goodness. Go see it – if your taste is anything like mine you'll like it. A lot.