Director Wes Anderson
Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwarzman, Angelica Huston.
US 91mins Rated 15
Wes Anderson fans will welcome his latest comedy starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman as three dysfunctional brothers who head off on a spiritual journey to find each other, their long-lost mother and hopefully themselves.
The Darjeeling Limited is the train they travel on across Rajastan in this strange neurotic and at times deeply unfunny saga. It starts fairly positively with some farcical carriage scenes as the youngest (Schwarzman) beds the stewardess then goes rapidly off track with them stranded in the desert with a printer, a laminator and a supply of over the counter prescription drugs.
Oh if it had only ended there, leaving us wanting more. But it carries on very much short of steam with the real “spiritual” leg of the journey where we meet an exhausted Angelica Huston as their reluctant mother, now a Catholic nun. There are some acutely observed moments of family dysfunction, slow-motion surrealness and a marvellous bit where the camera snakes through the carriages offering vignettes from previous scenes but for most of us this is a journey we’d rather forget.