Wes Anderson has contrived another of his elegant, eccentric, rectilinear comedies; as ever, he is vulnerable to the charge of making films that stylistically resemble all his others, and yet no more, surely, than all those other directors making conventional films that resemble all the rest of their own conventional work.
The Phoenician Scheme is enjoyable and executed with Anderson’s usual tremendous dispatch, but it is somehow less visually detailed and inspired than some of his earlier work; there is less screwball sympathy for the characters, and it is disconcerting to see actors of the calibre of Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe and Scarlett Johansson phoning in tiny, deadpan, almost immobile cameos. But there is a likable lead turn from Mia Threapleton, an eerie visual and aural echo of her mother, Kate Winslet.
