It’s so nice to connect with a Wes Anderson movie again. I’ve been mostly a fan from the beginning but his career has as many ups as downs for me, often getting lost in his distinct dollhouse style of artifice and losing the sense of wounded humanity that marks his best movies. I haven’t truly loved a Wes Anderson movie since 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I consider one of his very best. It’s been a long ten years of feeling indifferent or distant to that signature Anderson twee whimsy. I took my wife to see 2021’s The French Dispatch in the theater, and this was her first Anderson movie, and it also happened to be his worst movie, plus with Timothee Chalamet, an actor she isn’t fond of. I feel like I ruined her impression of this indie auteur and the question over his enduring popularity. 2023’s Asteroid City had some interesting ideas and dramatic potential, but its multiple framing devices and layers of obfuscation smothered what I could have enjoyed about its drama buried underneath. It is with that accruing disappointment that I began to question whether new Wes Anderson movies just weren’t for me, and that’s why I find The Phoenician Scheme a welcomed return to form that makes me relieved. The idiosyncratic tactician that is Anderson can still make a movie that engages me on different levels, including an emotional one, which I’ve been missing for so long from his recent output.

So I’m going to do something a little different with this review. I’m going to specify and articulate why this movie works for me, namely why it resonates and succeeds where his other movies of late have not. I suppose you could argue every film critique is charged with explaining the nuts and bolts of an opinion, but I’m going to really try and crack open why The Phoenician Scheme is a better movie overall.

1) Emotional investment. Primarily Anderson is known for his heavily mannered, expertly curated style, which is why he seems to be the go-to pastiche for A.I. film juxtaposition experiments (“What if Wes Anderson directed Star Wars?” etc.). Many of Anderson’s movies are populated with hurt people trying to reconnect, a subject that has great emotional appeal. However, if you cannot connect with the characters or their dynamic or the relationship stakes, then it can feel like an afterthought to all that fancy production design and camera placement. With The Phoenician Scheme, the movie is an adventure film but it’s really about a father (Benicio del Toro as Zsa-Zsa Korda) trying to reconnect with his estranged adult daughter (Mia Threapleton as Sister Liesel). The father is a billionaire robber baron set in a vaguely mid 19-century setting. The daughter is a newly enshrined nun who believes that her father had her mother killed. Right away, we have very different perspectives and exciting conflict between them. He’s an arms dealer and willing to have key parts of his scheme involve a famine and slave labor. Her very involvement in the convent is itself a reaction to her father, who sent her away to live there at age five. She doesn’t want to be like him, who she views as on the wrong side of morality, but she also wants to get to know this man better and get her own answers. Her convent needs her to proceed to get a significant donation from her father. He wants to hire her on a trial basis to see if she’s fit to be his sole heir. They’re stuck together on an adventure that forces them closer, and the ensuing relationship that begins to build, with old hurts melting away to new revelations and new aches of yearning, comes across as very involving and emotionally rewarding. I was actually quite taken by the father-daughter relationship and their bickering, which organically gives way to better understanding and personal growth from both parties. They make each other a little better than they could be, and they recognize that despite their differences and hurt, they do genuinely care about the other. Korda is such an unflappable dilettante and yet the very notion that his daughter thinks he might have killed her mother from rumors deeply upsets him. The rest of the movie is essentially both characters directly and indirectly trying to prove themself to the other and also acknowledge and accept the other person. The core of this movie works because the core relationship is given serious and deliberate development to be meaningful. It’s about a broken family recognizing their connection to one another and desire to be connected.

2) The vignettes do add up. The folly of The French Dispatch was that it was a collection of short films, meaning that every twenty-minutes or so it felt like having to start over again with character introductions and relationship development. It didn’t feel like it added up to much. With The Phoenician Scheme, the film is structured around the different investors that Korda has to convince to cover a higher percentage of a budget shortfall for the big plan. It might sound pretty lackluster on paper but it becomes a larger goal that each segment builds to, and each new investor and setting allows Anderson to explore a new aspect of his characters. One situation involves a literal game of basketball and another involves taking a bullet to save an investor. Each situation allows us to change things up without losing the momentum of building toward that larger goal, as well as continuing to build the progression of the character relationships. With a vignette movie, each segment is a beginning, middle, and end that starts over with the next. With this, we have those mini stories with each new investor, but the whole is still advancing. It allows Anderson to explore a variety of comedy and story options while still keeping his attention to the bigger picture, thus earning our continued investment and more payoffs.

3) This is still a very funny movie. That droll yet whimsical tone we expect from Wes Anderson is very present, and I was smiling and laughing throughout. I particularly loved a running joke where Korda offers each new guest a hand grenade like a welcome present. Korda also has repeated assassination attempts, which is the impetus for him reaching out to his daughter because he knows he won’t outlive every assassination attempt. However, in the meantime, each new assassination attempt is presented as another predictable annoyance, and I enjoyed that with every one Korda admits, “I think that guy used to work for me.” The basketball game of horse is wonderfully absurd and dryly serious at the same time, elevated by Bryan Cranston’s considerable commitment to the bit. Another great source of comedy is Michael Cera as the third significant character to the adventure, Bjorn, an assistant to Korda and also an entomologist. He’s such a delightful nonplussed addition to the trio, providing an outsider perspective to the family drama and reminding us how not normal everything is. I heartily enjoyed how his nerdy passion for bugs keeps inserting itself in all sorts of unexpected situations. The excesses of Korba’s lifestyle, and his seeming history of amorality, allows for just about anything to be possible or referenced, opening the comedy even further into surreal asides still tethered to characterization.

4) The added religious elements provide a deeper introspection for the characters and the viewer. Every time Korba has a near-death experience from his latest assassination attempt, we have a black and white sequence of Korba interacting with the afterlife. In one sequence he’s being judged by St. Peter, then God, then his own deceased wives. Each opportunity with the afterlife is a reminder for Korba about his sins and mistakes and a motivator to do better. The stylized realm is mysterious without being overt in its directions, allowing Korba to stumble around looking for guidance, like when God is annoyed that He isn’t recognized as the Big Guy. I was amused by these little interludes but they also act like a moral intervention for our main character, and his growing interest is a sign that his daughter’s influence is affecting him. It adds a depth to the character as well as a weightier sense of celestial consequences for a life of misdeeds, and it helps to better realism the character’s arc as well as set him up for change. It allows an introspection over legacy. These are also the segments you’ll get the most blink-and-miss-them cameos, like Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and F. Murray Abraham.

5) Smaller ensemble to devote characterization. Everyone wants to work with Anderson, and he keeps an impressive list of actors who continuously reappear, even if it’s only for seconds, anything to just be back into the ornate world of a Wes Anderson fantasy. His last few films have been stuffed with characters but there wasn’t enough for everyone to do (go ahead, try and remember what Steve Carrell did in Asteroid City). The narrative gets fractured trying to provide enough moments and screen time for all these distaff characters. A larger cast is not inherently a doomed prospect, but it does mean more attention and development needs to be made, and with less time, to ensure those characters are meaningful and well developed. The French Dispatch and Asteroid City couldn’t do that for me. This time Anderson condenses his important characters down to a manageable trio. We have other supporting players but they typically come and go through the different vignettes, each getting their turn with the main players. This keeps the focus on the winning character dynamic of the father-daughter buddy comedy, and with Bjorn bumbling along and finding himself becoming more fond of Liesel. There are some fun twists and turns with the three characters but no matter the external obstacles or silliness, the emphasis remains on these three and their relationships. It all works so much better.

6) The acting by the Anderson newcomers is greatly enjoyable. It’s shocking that this is the first time Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim Takes Off) has been in a Wes Anderson movie because his comic sensibilities are a natural fit for this universe. The direction his character goes lets Cera have even more ways to have fun, and each new turn made me love his character and the performance even more. I also love that, despite all the revelations, at his core, Bjorn really is a nerd who loves talking about insects. The real discovery is Threapleton (The Buccaneers), though maybe we shouldn’t have been so surprised considering she is the adult daughter of Kate Winslet (do you feel old now too?). She holds her own with her many scenes with del Toro and is able to hone her withering glare into a considerable weapon of disapproval. Watching her character blossom and test her boundaries, like when she says she’s only drank communion wine and is introduced to a new form of alcohol at every jaunt that she feels compelled to try. It’s a character that is slowly recognizing more about herself and the possibilities of this life.

The Phoenician Scheme isn’t a deviation from the tried-and-true Wes Anderson formula; it’s a better calibration of what makes that style and formula continue to resonate for so many fans. I’m apparently in a small minority with my esteem for this picture, and that’s fine by me. I’ve outlined through this review the reasons why it was a much more enjoyable and worthwhile entertainment for me, and if you found yourself nodding along, then perhaps it could work its query magic on you as well. It’s nice to be charmed again by a Wes Anderson movie but to also feel something rather than distant appreciation for the carefully composed sets and photography. I actually cared about these characters and their journey. The end results mattered to me. Their plights mattered. If you’re like me and falling from the Wes Anderson bandwagon, then perhaps The Phoenician Scheme might pull you back aboard.

Nate’s Grade: A-