The French Dispatch (2021) Review

 "Don't cry in my office."
-Arthur Howitzer Jr.


When the creator and editor of The French Dispatch suddenly dies, the newspaper is only allowed to publish one final edition before ceasing production forever.  These are the final stories.


What Works:

The French Dispatch is very much a film by Wes Anderson.  His directing and the cinematography come together to make this film feel like a storybook come to life.  I love the framing of each shot.  It's so meticulous and most of them are very layered.  As per usual with Anderson, this movie is a visual feast.

This is an anthology film with the first segment being a very short story of the cycling reporter, Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), giving us a tour of the city of Ennui.  It's a quick segment, but it does a good job of setting up the city, where all of the stories take place.  And Wilson is hilarious in both his narration and physical comedy.

The next story is the best one, which involves an art dealer (Adrien Brody), a murderous artist (Benicio del Toro), and a prison guard the murderer is in love with (Léa Seydoux).  I love all of the jabs at modern art, which is something I don't understand myself.  The performances are also excellent across the board.  We even get a wheelchair chase/fight.  What more do you need?

The 3rd story is my least favorite, but there are still parts of it I liked.  The "romance" between Frances McDormand's character and Timothée Chalamet's caught me completely off guard, but it was pretty funny.  There is also a really well done scene with a group of cadets living in barracks.  

The final story is also excellent.  Jeffrey Wright narrates the whole thing in probably the best performance of the movie.  We get a unique blend of culinary arts and police work in this segment, which were two things I did not expect to be combined.  We also get a wonderfully animated chase sequence to round things out.  It's a lot of fun and cracked my entire theater up at the end.


What Sucks:

As I mentioned above, the 3rd story was my least favorite.  It follows Chalamet's character as he takes part in a revolution and writes a manifesto.  He runs into conflict with another revolutionary, played by Lyna Khoudri, as they each have a crush on the other, but have different ideas on how the revolution should play out.  It just simply isn't as interesting as everything else in the movie.  I definitely felt myself losing interesting at one point, but the movie pulls you back in pretty quickly.


Verdict:

I love the look of Wes Anderson's films and that holds true with The French Dispatch.  3 of the 4 stories are fantastic, with excellent performances across the board and plenty of hilarious moments.  While the 3rd story isn't as good, it still has plenty of good moments.  This movie has definitely got it going on.

 9/10: Great 


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