Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

The Darjeeling Limited
2007

Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Waris Ahluwalia, Amara Karan, Bill Murray, Camilla Rutherford, Irrfan Khan

Francis, Peter, and Jack Whitman recently lost their father. Now the brothers and their dad's monogrammed luggage take a spiritual journey through India, where they hope to be reunited with their long-absent mother. Wes Anderson has specialised in whimsical tales about dysfunctional families. This, however, is a dull and annoying comedy about three personality vacuums on a plotless and pointless rail trip. He and his co-writers Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola couldn't even be bothered to make it up as they went along. It's supposedly a story of three men on a route to self-discovery, but the film has a permanent twinkle in its eye and it's never believable when it tries to deal with actual human emotions. India is nothing but a pretty backdrop here; even the two actors playing members of the staff aboard the train are clearly not local. Anderson's visuals are interesting, which is just about the only nice thing I can say about this tandoori turkey.