The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Directed by Wes Anderson. Starring Adrian Brody, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia, Anjelica Huston, Wallace Wolodarsky, Barbet Schroeder, Irrfan Khan, Camilla Rutherford. [R]

Three disaffected brothers travel through India on a self-described spiritual journey, bickering and bonding and trying to come to terms with their family and individual lives. Anderson brings his usual mannered and self-conscious style to the proceedings, but the main characters aren’t particularly amusing or arresting; in fact, spending time in their company is rarely pleasurable, nor is their odyssey especially rewarding—the metaphor of discarding their literal baggage near the end is transparent, but there’s no sense that it’s even earned. Drags at times, making that trim hour-and-a-half running time feel much longer. At least the framing and art direction make it engaging to look at (a stylized but not-likely-authentic travelogue), and Anderson continues to use pop music exceptionally well, especially the wonderful Kinks numbers. Natalie Portman can be spotted briefly towards the end (she co-starred in a short film, Hotel Chevalier, with Schwartzman that serves as a prologue to this story); Bill Murray also cameos.

56/100