Wes World

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (A-minus) - No one builds a fictional world like Wes Anderson does. Nothing is quite as intricate and intimate and fun.

Not quite as twee as the previews suggested, "Grand Budapest Hotel" brings a level of nostalgia and melancholy to Anderson's typical mannered zaniness with smarts and heart.

Here, he's crafted a pre-WWII Eastern Europe, before the Iron Curtain fell, with an eye for artistic detail like a religious zealot. It's his most fully realized environment and story line since the under-appreciated "Life Aquatic With Steve Zizou." You can truly get lost with him down this delightful rabbit hole and relish the magic of movie-making. The gorgeous pink hotel sits in establishing shots like a birthday cake atop a mountain, and every nook and cranny inside is meticulously rendered. It's the perfect jumping-off point for old-fashioned story spinning.

"Grand Budapest" is a caper film, about a dandy of a hotel concierge, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), and his loyal lobby boy, Zero Moustafa (newcomer Tony Revolori), as they run from Nazi-era bad guys who are after a rare painting that Gustave inherited from one of the old ladies he beds, Madame D. (a shriveled Tilda Swinton). In Anderson's hands, Fiennes was simply born for this role, snapping off lines like a highlight reel. It's not unlike Gene Hackman as Anderson's classic creation, Royal Tenenbaum, a character that felt like the inevitable culmination of Hackman's career.

And no one makes Anderson dialogue sing like Jeff Goldblum, here savoring the role of legal minder Deputy Kovacs. The rest of the cast is loaded with a who's who of talented actors: Mathieu Amalric as a put-upon butler, Harvey Keitel as a shirtless, tattooed inmate, Willem Dafoe as a growling henchman, a giddy Edward Norton as a Zig Zag commander Henckels, Saoirse Ronan (with a Gorbachevian birthmark in the shape of Mexico on her right cheek) as the baker gal and Zero's love interest, Jason Schwartzman as a '60s-era concierge, Lea Seydoux as a meek maid, and Bill Murray and Bob Balaban in cameos as Gustave's cohorts in the Society of the Crossed Keys.

Many of the gags are subtle, even silly, and some have an extra layer of sweetness. After M. Gustave is ousted from the hotel, his replacement as concierge is named M. Chuck (and played by an oafish Owen Wilson). When Zero leaves a note to Agatha, he signs it "From Z to A." When one of the celebrated Mendl's cakes is smuggled into a prison cell, Gustave sets out to carve it into portions by requesting, not just a blade, but "the throat slitter." The choreography of inmates hacking away at the bars of a cell brings to mind both Ziegfeld and the Three Stooges.

What gives the film its heft is the narrative device. Tom Wilkinson starts telling the story as an author in the 1980s, and he flashes back to the Communist-era '60s when, as a young reporter (played by Jude Law), he ran into an older, grizzled version of lobby boy Zero (now played by F. Murray Abraham). The once-elegant hotel is now Khrushchev tacky, with a flat orange color scheme, mock mod stylings, and blunt signage everywhere. (It reminded me of Hotel Argentina in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in the 1990s; all that was missing was the clear plastic bubble phone booths.) It is depopulated and raggedy. Only Mendl's bouffant desserts have survived from the old days.

Moustafa spins his tale over dinner, taking us back to a time when, in Gustave's view, a civil, mannered society was coming to a coarse end. The '60s styles are depressing, and Moustafa is a lonely figure, still heartbroken over the loss of a beloved era that had seemed so rife with possibility, nobility and hope (even if, perhaps, it was false hope). It's as if a colorful 3-D world was popped like a balloon and we can never be that youthful and happy again. Or, it's tough to admit, maybe our recollections themselves are like a luscious, boxed Mendl's cake -- empty calories that trigger sugar-coated memories.