Pokematic Reviews The Grand Budapest Hotel

It won like 4 awards, so it should be good. But is it?

If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic "hi."

So I rented The Grand Budapest Hotel. I had no interest in seeing it until I saw that it was essentially this year's Gravity; won almost all awards nominated except best picture. It was no Gravity, but for different reasons, reasons I'll get into. No, I won't compare it to Gravity, because they are very different movies. That would be comparing Apples to Steaks. Enough stalling, here's my review of The Grand Budapest Hotel.

First, how's the story? Well, it's good. It's about a guy who's a lobby boy, Zero, who gets taken under the wing of the rather eccentric concierge, Gustave, of The Grand Budapest Hotel. This concierge has a thing for old, blond, rich, women as stated in the movie. This gets him into a rather crazy situation involving stolen art and murder. However, to go into further detail would be spoilers, and while it's not very twist and turns, it's still best left unspoiled. I will say this though, the pacing is quite fast, like the fastest that's possible for the viewer to understand the first time. This then brings me to the acting.

Now the acting is what really shines. There are 2 main characters, Zero and Gustave. Zero is a mostly mute character because Gustave doesn't shut up. They play off each other perfectly. Zero emotes a lot of things through facial expressions. However, when he does talk, it's very strait forward and very good. Then there's Gustave, he doesn't shut up, and he speaks quite fast. The story moves so fast because Gustave speaks so fast. However, it's a perfect speed. Unlike Zuckerberg in The Social Network, who speaks so fast that you can't understand him, Gustave speaks fast enough that the story moves quite fast but slow enough that you're able to understand him. There's also a wide cast of high profile actors, like Edward Norton, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson. Well those are the 3 that I picked up on, and they were very small parts. It was very well acted.

Speaking of well made, there's also the the cinematography. When I first loaded the movie, it says "set your monitor to 16:9," and that's because the movie is best watched on 16:9 due to the changing aspect ratio. See, the movie is done with multiple aspect ratios; I believe 2:1 movie super extended for present day, 4:3 for flashback, and 16:9 for the lady reading the book of The Grand Budapest Hotel. But that's not all, there's a lot of optical tricks and things that happen that I wouldn't associate with an academy award wining movie. Like, in the present day part, they use super wide angle and slight fish eye. Personally I hate the fish eye lens because it distorts the edges and makes strait lines curved. When I first saw it I had to do double takes to see "are they REALLY using a fish eye?" Indeed they were. And you know what, it worked. Surprisingly, it showed off the remarkable sets with a super wide angle only capable of being seen with a fish eye lens. I guess the reason I hate fish eye so much is because I've never seen it used properly. Used properly, it looks pretty good. Then there was this thing where they straitened a painting and the camera lens changed. Like, I saw the slight changes in the picture and I'm like "they changed the lens to coincide with the painting being straitened, great work there."

This segues into the editing. Now I don't claim to be an expert editor, I'm a noob at best, but I have an appreciation for great editing. Now with this movie being so fast paced, the editing needs to be VERY tight and spot on. The editors that made this movie a reality, spot on, excellent job. The humor would not be good without your skills at the editing desk.

Oh yeah, this movie is a comedy. It's definitely a dark comedy, drawing it's humor from some dark places, but it's also very light hearted and bubbly. Even the darker stuff, like a guy getting his fingers chopped off before being murdered is done in a very light hearted tone and is quite funny. The scene where there's a shoot out, it's the funniest part of the movie because it's just so ridiculous, but not so much that it's silly. It's hard to describe because the humor is just so foreign, and I know a lot of different humor. There's even a scene where the CG is done rather poorly for comedic effect, and done quite well might I add.

Bottom line, you should see The Grand Budapest Hotel, provided you're fine with an R-rated comedy. I mean, it's on the boarder of R and PG-13. If they took out the scene with the topless old lady, Gustave receiving oral sex, some of the images of nudity and gore, and a couple fewer swear words, it would have easily been PG-13. Oh, and score, costume design, and make-up was good too. Whatever, it's a really good movie. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.