The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun

Directed by Wes Anderson, The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun is an anthology film centered around the staff of a small newspaper and their efforts to put out a final issue in the wake of their beloved editor’s (Bill Murray’s Arthur Howitzer, Jr.) death. It’s certainly not surprising to discover that Anderson has infused The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun with as less-than-subtle and larger-than-life a visual sensibility as one might’ve anticipated, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that Anderson’s meticulous approach to his overtly off-kilter screenplay goes a long way towards initially capturing the viewer’s attention and interest – with the compulsively watchable vibe heightened by the efforts of such inherently compelling performers as Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, and Owen Wilson. The movie’s eventual transformation into an uninvolving and almost aggressively sluggish piece of work, then, is fairly disappointing, to say the least, as Anderson delivers an exceedingly erratic midsection that contains virtually nothing for the viewer to wholeheartedly embrace or connect to (ie the relentlessly oddball, style-over-substance atmosphere eventually becomes oppressive, particularly in the tedious and hopelessly underwhelming Timothée Chalamet-focused second story). And although the picture does recover slightly with a comparatively engaging final segment, The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun does, by and large, come off as a low point for a filmmaker with distinct hit-and-miss tendencies.

** out of ****