Film Review – The Phoenician Scheme

Perhaps something has happened to Wes Anderson. The writer/director was once in touch with his cheeky side, making lively pictures that retained his meticulous sense of visual design without becoming mummified by his vision. Recent efforts such as “The French Dispatch” and “Asteroid City” reflect a refinement in his particular moviemaking manner, but his humor has eroded over the years, now firmly committed to creating deadpan operas involving all-star casts, absolutely devouring period settings in the process. The helmer returns with another overbaked offering in “The Phoenician Scheme,” which maintains the Anderson way in sound and vision, but visibly struggles to become the darkly comedic romp the filmmaker imagines it to be. A great cast and sharp technical credits do their thing, but “The Phoenician Scheme” doesn’t show signs of life, slowly stiffening up with material that’s more concerned with Anderson’s cinematic fetishes than taking viewers on a wild ride of faces and places. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com