SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
From auteur Wes Anderson comes an anthology comedy about three stories that personally impacted the lives of journalists working for the fictional French magazine publication titled after the film.
In the writer-director's classic style, everything that you'd expect from him, ranging from obsessive centered framing to the gorgeous production design set pieces à la The Grand Budapest Hotel, is present here. The French Dispatch is an extremely planned and choreographed moving images, in terms of dialogue, performances, staging and blocking that it almost makes your jaw drop at the sheer brilliant technical aspects on display here! The result of this is everything appears catchy and rhythmic, downright to the absolutely hilarious diction based comedy at parts. It goes without saying that this is easily one of the most gorgeous pictures ever shot and one that makes you wonder the things that could be accomplished in cinema! Police chase shootout climax in cartoon is easily the best sequence of the entire show!
Pushing this style aspect of the film to the side, the substance underneath is pretty flimsy. One of the biggest drawbacks of the anthology genre is that it often fails to deliver its overall point, as in what is the deeper connection between these specific stories to belong in this one feature. Theme? Characters? Arcs? But, the feebleness here sinks further than that, with the individual episodes seem like giant made-up-stories of whatever came to the writer's mind at the time of writing. Wes Anderson has gathered an impressive roster of ensemble cast... and for what exactly? Too many extraneous characters and too much unnecessary storytelling bits here ultimately dilutes the point of each story strand. To summarize, The French Dispatch is most certainly style-over-substance.