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" There&amp;#039;s a scene in The Darjeeling Limited, the story of three brothers reconnecting on a train ride through India, in which an exasperated sleeper-car hostess asks a barefoot, bandaged, and neurotic Jason Schwartzman, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s wrong with you?&amp;quot; His response -- a deadpanned &amp;quot;Let me think about that&amp;quot; -- is classic Wes Anderson: mild verbal obfuscation that serves as the &amp;quot;Holy shit, this is deep&amp;quot; moment. The question, however, haunts the rest of the movie.  Sure, there are people who just don&amp;#039;t dig Wes Anderson. But I&amp;#039;m not one of them. I bought Rushmore on Criterion Collection DVD, I still tear up at The Royal Tenenbaums, and I held my tongue when The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou clunked. Which is what makes this so disappointing. It&amp;#039;s painful to watch the camel&amp;#039;s back break, especially when it&amp;#039;s due to diminishing returns of cleverness.  Anderson had his trademark nailed by movie two. His protagonists could say as much with a single pained look as they could with drier-than-the-Sahara dialogue. (Think Luke Wilson and Gwyneth Paltrow&amp;#039;s postsuicide-attempt conversation in Tenenbaums.) His world ran on hipster irony and daddy issues, his impossibly idiosyncratic characters walking a tightrope of familial dysfunction in tracksuits and velveteen usually in slow motion. And it was inspired. But there&amp;#039;s a reason magicians don&amp;#039;t pull quarters out of your ear twice in a row.  Darjeeling makes it official: Anderson no longer has a calling card; he has a shtick. Homina-homina-caliber shtick. It&amp;#039;s the world-weary fellows who hurl non sequiturs and charm with endearing peccadilloes and aberrant behavior. The guys who eschew convention and -- inexplicably -- shoes. We&amp;#039;ve met those dudes before, and we&amp;#039;ve watched them slow-mo their way to a flawed but sustainable happiness. So cut the cords, Wes. No strange pets like Dalmatian mice or cobras. No more Kinks songs. No more Bill Murray as an easy symbol of tragedy incarnate. Give someone a normal job, haircut, serotonin level. And, please, everything at regular speed. Sluggish momentum is contagious. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a3520/wesanderson1107/>