3 hours ago Nicholas Barber Featuring Benicio Del Toro, Michael Cera, Scarlett Johansson and many more, the director’s latest A-lister-filled farce has premiered at Cannes – and it’s daft but fun.
The good news is that The Phoenician Scheme is one of Anderson’s funnier films, with a commitment to knockabout zaniness which lets you smile at the Anderson-ishness rather than simply roll your eyes at it.
The Phoenician Scheme Director: Wes Anderson Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson Run-time: 1hr 41m There are glimmers of emotion here and there.
On one level, The Phoenician Scheme is about a heartless man learning to be a better person by spending time with his determined daughter.
In the case of The Phoenician Scheme, it feels as if Anderson and his team were enjoying it more than audiences ever will.
3 hours prior.
Nicholas Barber.
The director’s most recent A-lister-filled comedy, which debuted at Cannes and stars Benicio Del Toro, Michael Cera, Scarlett Johansson, and numerous others, is silly but entertaining.
The symmetrical tableaux, the vibrantly colored, immaculately pressed costumes, and the deadpan delivery of proudly manufactured dialogue by a cast of regulars (yes, Bill Murray does appear) are just a few of the eccentricities that have come to define Wes Anderson’s style. Just when you think he can get any more Wes Anderson-ish, he creates a film that goes above and beyond. Whether audience members of his most recent unconventional comedy are Wes-skeptics or Anderson fans, they will undoubtedly question whether the writer-director will ever try something less familiar.
The good news is that The Phoenician Scheme is one of Anderson’s funnier movies. Its dedication to knockabout zaniness makes you laugh at the Anderson-ishness instead of just rolling your eyes. In particular, the opening scene is a hilarious delight. Benicio del Toro is introduced as Zsa-zsa Korda, an immoral businessman from the 1950s who appears to have been influenced by the ultra-wealthy like Howard Hughes, J Paul Getty, Aristotle Onassis, and William Randolph Hearst. He also resembles the patriarch in The Royal Tenenbaums. He is first seen smoking a cigar on his private jet. He then survives one of the frequent assassination attempts in his life, and his incredible escape has enough vigor to make you feel ecstatic.
His lighthearted, whimsical, slow-moving, talkative farce is so ridiculous in its plot devices that the actors and crew may have been making it up as they went.
But the movie soon returns to reality after that. Returning to his lavish home, Korda meets with his daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who is 20 years old. Even though he hasn’t seen her in years, he wants her to inherit his fortune from profiteering, arms dealing, and other shady activities, rather than any of his nine sons. Additionally, he wants her to assist him in his most recent and ambitious project, a huge infrastructure project that involves a dam and a railway in a desert in the Middle East. Although Liesl isn’t interested, she agrees to stay because she wants to look into the rumor that Korda killed her mother, one of his three wives.
The problem is that a secret agent (Rupert Friend) who works for all the governments that despise Korda has blocked the infrastructure plan. Unexpectedly lacking the necessary funds, he must travel throughout the region to renegotiate contracts with the help of Liesl and his nerdy new Norwegian secretary, Bjorn (a charmingly silly Michael Cera, who ought to have been in a Wes Anderson movie).
In addition to playing basketball with a prince (Riz Ahmed) and two railway tycoons (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston), Korda also gets a blood transfusion from a shipping magnate (Jeffrey Wright), is held at gunpoint with a nightclub impresario (Mathieu Amalric), and pops the question to his second cousin (Scarlett Johansson). He barely escapes assassination along the way; each time he has a near-death experience, he goes to a black-and-white heaven where Murray, F Murray Abraham, and Willem Dafoe portray God and the angels.
And the Phoenician Plan.
Wes Anderson helmed that.
Cast: Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Cera, Mia Threapleton, and Benicio Del Toro.
Run time: 1 hour and 41 minutes.
Here and there are flashes of emotion. On a certain level, The Phoenician Scheme is about a cold-hearted man who gains compassion by spending time with his resolute daughter. On a different level, though, the movie is about—well, it’s difficult to say. Although the topic of how rich industrialists make money by taking advantage of others is perhaps more relevant today, Anderson skips over the fallout from Korda’s decades of deceit. His farce is slow, talkative, whimsical, and episodic. Its humor is based on catchphrases, and its clumsy plot devices suggest that the cast and crew may have been making it up as they went along. One of the ironies of Anderson’s films is that, despite their meticulous planning in many ways, the plot of The Phoenician Scheme could have been written in the wee hours of the morning on the back of the envelope. Although it’s entertaining, it’s likely that by the halfway point the plot will seem too arbitrary for you to care about unless you have an extremely high tolerance for the director’s eccentricities.
The action picks up later when Korda and his evil half-brother, played by Benedict Cumberbatch with a stick-on beard, engage in a Tom-and-Jerry-style brawl. However, the slapstick does act as a last acknowledgement that this absurdity is not to be taken seriously. Some filmmakers brag that they only make movies that appeal to them and don’t give a damn about what other people think. The Phoenician Scheme seems to have delighted Anderson and his crew more than viewers will ever experience.
★★★☆☆.
