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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Darjeeling Limited, The
Fox Searchlight Pictures
 |
|
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for language
Starring
Owen Wilson,
Adrien Brody,
Jason Schwartzman,
Amara Karan,
Natalie Portman,
Bill Murray,
Irfan Khan,
and
Anjelica Huston
Three American brothers who have not spoken to each other in a year set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other -- to become brothers again like they used to be. Their "spiritual quest", however, veers rapidly off-course (due to events involving over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray), and they eventually find themselves stranded alone in the middle of the desert with eleven suitcases, a printer, and a laminating machine. At this moment, a new, unplanned journey suddenly begins. (Fox Searchlight)
| GENRE(S): |
Adventure
|
Comedy
|
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jason Schwartzman
Roman Coppola
Wes Anderson
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| DIRECTED BY: |
Wes Anderson
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| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 26, 2008
Theatrical: September 29, 2007
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
91 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
A picture that certain Brits and connoisseurs of British colloquial English might call "a grower" … more moving and funny the more I think about it.
88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
All the acting is exemplary. Brody, new to Wes' World, is revelatory as Peter.
88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Anderson is like Dave Brubeck, who I'm listening to right now. He knows every note of the original song, but the fun and genius come in the way he noodles around. And in his movie's cast, especially with Owen Wilson, Anderson takes advantage of champion noodlers.
83
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
This is familiar psychological as well as stylistic territory for Anderson after "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums." But there's a startling new maturity in Darjeeling, a compassion for the larger world that busts the confines of the filmmaker's miniaturist instincts.
80
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
The Darjeeling Limited amounts finally to a high-end, high-toned tourist adventure. I don’t mean this dismissively; it would be hypocritical of me to deny the delights of luxury travel to faraway lands. And Mr. Anderson’s eye for local color — the red-orange-yellow end of the spectrum in particular — is meticulous and admiring.
80
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
This tale of filial love and family baggage is Wes Anderson's most heartfelt feature film yet. Its companion short, "Hotel Chevalier," is darn near perfect.
80
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
The India of the movie is more an idea than a reality...Exotic, spiritual and, according to Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), "spicy"-smelling, it's a magical mystery place where wayward foreigners can go to get their souls back on track.
80
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
What this movie has going for itself in spite of its cloying pleas for indulgence is a playful and interesting narrative structure that precludes much development and comes to the fore only toward the end. The whole thing may drive you batty, but as with "Rushmore," the melancholy aftertaste lingers.
80
Empire
Angie Errigo
Funny peculiar and funny ha ha, with a spontaneity and energy that gather up a powerful emotional head of steam as it chugs along.
75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
By now, you know exactly what to expect, which is both good and bad. To my mind, Anderson reached the acme of this formula in the first go, in "Tenenbaums," and has now replicated it twice, evoking smaller pleasures each time.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
A movie about people who literally carry a lot of emotional baggage, metaphorically unpack it, and spiritually lighten their loads. By the end, I felt lighter. Which is closer to enlightenment than most movies get.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
As always with Anderson, the comedy is neatly embedded in the jaded banter, where the insecurities and rivalries bubble up -- here, all within the bell jar of that shared sleeping compartment.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Spiritual journeys, even if they’re comedies, don’t really lend themselves to the extreme, anal-retentive formalism found in every frame of The Darjeeling Limited.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
A spiritual quest can take many forms. One could argue that all of director Wes Anderson's movies focus on a sense of personal melancholy and directionlessness that often fuels such an odyssey. And they do so with a dark and offbeat wit.
75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Anderson can't quite rise above his own quirkiness. It's not that he can't respond to the beauty he places before us – he can – but his jokiness keeps undercutting his own best efforts. The Darjeeling Limited is a transitional film for him: He's outgrown a comic style that can no longer accommodate his deeper feelings.
70
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
The film as a whole operates in Mr. Anderson's patented, semi-precious zone of antic and droll. It's not as if the filmmaker has gone off the rails. He's just not solidly on them.
70
Variety
Alissa Simon
Inventively staged picture should satisfy the upscale, youth and cult auds Anderson has developed, though it's unlikely to draw significantly better than his earlier work.
70
Newsweek
David Ansen
A return to form after the flat "Life Aquatic," Darjeeling has a lightweight, coloring-book charm that deepens and darkens after these odd, privileged ducks are thrown off the train.
70
Village Voice
Nathan Lee
I was moved by Darjeeling, flaws and all, but if my job is to explain why, I find it difficult for reasons that are none of my business. From the minute Wilson walks onscreen, face covered in scars, eyes full of trouble, Darjeeling is warped by the gravitas of his recent suicide attempt.
70
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
The Darjeeling Limited"has its charms, chief of which is watching three terrific actors evince with unforced ease the rewards and resentments of brotherhood.
70
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
The Darjeeling Limited works best when the level of artifice is at its highest and most overt.
67
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
It’s a hard film to shake, and there’s an awful lot to be said for that.
67
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
The men are fuzzily defined and the film feels incomplete. The devil may be in the details, but for the first time, Anderson's obsession with them has caused him to lose sight of the bigger picture.
63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The latest Christmas-tree movie from director Wes Anderson, who makes pictures so carefully appointed and decorated, they sometimes feel like they're made to be looked at instead of watched.
63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Technically and thematically, there's a lot in The Darjeeling Limited to arrest the attention. Emotionally, there's a void.
63
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
You have to admire that someone thought it’d be cool to assemble three of the movies’ most fascinating noses for a 90-minute romp.
60
Time
Richard Corliss
Picaresque movies often feel longer than they are. For them to work, they need an interior spring with more thrust than Darjeeling's attempt at reconstituted brotherhood. The problem is in Anderson's approach, which is so supercool, it's chilly. Anderson has the attitude for comedy but not the aptitude.
58
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Anderson creates a deluxe train set, for sure. All he neglects is building up an electric current or a head of steam.
50
Film Threat
Mark Bell
The Darjeeling Limited isn't so bad as to offend those who love Wes Anderson too much, but it is not the triumph that his previous films have been.
50
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
The trouble with this precious fable isn't that the Whitmans are self-absorbed ninnies: It's that they aren't characters at all.
50
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Wilson, Brody and Schwartzman have their charms, but the script gives them little to work with. Anderson and his co-writers have come up with an ordinary road movie.
50
Slate
Dana Stevens
The Darjeeling Limited (Fox Searchlight) struggles to open out from the beautiful, stifling world inside Anderson's head. But like in his last movie, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Anderson makes the mistake of keeping its protagonists trapped for too long aboard a means of conveyance.
50
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Hit and miss, but its tone of lyric melancholy is remarkably sustained.
38
New York Post
Kyle Smith
A slow train to Dullsville that makes all local stops. You know a film is in trouble if the most interesting thing in it is the luggage.
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A frustrating movie, a work of immaturity from a director who should be past the empty gestures and self-protective distance of his early work.
 The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 103 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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