"I suppose I'm moved by this absurd performance."
Focus Features / Indian Paintbrush
As his sidekicks, the deadpan Mia Threapleton (daughter of Kate Winslet) as a nun-in-training and a perfectly goofy Michael Cera are along for the treacherous ride all over the fictional Eastern European nation of Phoenicia, looking to make deals. Del Toro's ruthless tycoon quickly hits the road to persuade his sketchy partners to cover his losses after a series of manipulated commodities setbacks, and surviving his sixth plane crash, a targeted but failed assassination attempt by one of his many enemies.
Countless famous faces come in for humorous bit parts, including the likes of Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Ayoade, Scarlett Johansson, and Benedict Cumberbatch, as various business associates, royal members, and distant relatives. Everyone knows what they are there to do, with a carefully managed sense of character eccentricities throughout the film that lift the lead performances to highly comical levels.
By using the director's trademark whimsical aesthetic and highly stylized layers of storytelling artifice, the occasionally blood-soaked action makes everything feel all the more amusing. His conception of an estranged but emotional father/daughter relationship between del Toro and Threapleton pulls at the heartstrings despite the dark humour.
Anderson and company have finely crafted another silly but heartfelt tale of dysfunctional families wrapped in a fictionalized but entertaining vision of globetrotting mid-century European antics. It's one more exacting cinematic experience told with the highest of production values and available talent on screen.
More | YVArcade / Slashfilm / Vogue
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