This is not a film. This is a board game you want to spend the whole day playing. This is a pastry shop you can’t stop gorging till you feel sick. The comedy is as black as coal and the tragedy is as white as snow. Shakespeare might have made clear distinctions between tragedy and comedy.
One reason the film is do funny is because it breaks some basic conventions of editing. We all know that films are fake and we need to suspend that disbelief while watching it. Usually when a person starts climbing the stairs we see him at the top in the next shot. But here we see him climbing and climbing. If someone is dropping a rope, it keeps dropping and dropping. The effects are hilarious.
The film is basically a story within a story within a story by a narrator narrating to another narrator who is a writer and eventually writes the book called “Grand Budapest Hotel” which is being read by a girl to all of us. Plus, the dialogues are so funny as if it’s written by PG Wodehouse himself. Here’s an example: “For my dearest, darling, treasured, cherished Agatha, whom I worship. With respect, adoration, admiration, kisses, gratitude, best wishes and love from Z to A”.
The characters are all over the top like Japanese Kabuki Theater. Even the filmmaking is exaggerated – the camera pans, tilts, zooms, tracks as if it is beyond the control of the director like the evil scientist’s hand in “Dr Strangelove” (1964). And there are a lot of film references, characters look vaguely familiar from German classics like “Nosfaratu” (1922), “Last Laugh” (1924), “M” (1931) and French classics like “Grand Illusion” (1937) and all the films of Jacques Tati (including the production design). The entire film is basically an inside joke that mostly goes over our head.
The film got nine Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay. Writer-director Wes Anderson is a genius.