The Darjeeling Limited 2007

Mark Rahner, Seattle Times: [This] oddball odyssey stuck with me well after the final long, hypnotic shot of the magic train rolling through the Indian landscape. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: The Darjeeling Limited, the latest self-satisfied exercise in style over substance from writer-director Wes Anderson, will amuse his cult followers -- as well as Anderson himself and his pals, of course -- but probably nobody else. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: The film about three brothers in the wake of their dad's death is a pleasurable journey to nowhere, but it's worth the ride. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The whimsy of it all does a passable job of covering the dull stretches, and the actors, to a one (Bill Murray has a cameo, Anjelica Huston shows up) make it watchable. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: However irregular the beat, this one has a heart. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: 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. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: 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. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: The usual pleasures of Anderson's work are all present in The Darjeeling Limited, which creates a gorgeous palette out of local color. Read more

Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic: Dripping with Wes Anderson's patented blend of whimsy and melancholy, The Darjeeling Limited is the story of three brothers traveling across India in search of themselves. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: The preciousness of this new enterprise pollutes the human relationships until everything seems like a pose. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: It's an affected film about disaffected people, and no cast in the world could save it. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Wes Anderson doesn't make movies like anybody else, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not. His latest, The Darjeeling Limited, combines what's best and worst about him. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This film is indeed Limited -- in appeal, sincerity and substance. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: This is familiar 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. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Even those invested in the idea that the journey is the destination may feel they've taken a train to nowhere. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: A Wes Anderson film is like a snow globe: it's hermetically sealed, precious, and pointless. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: None of this is as amusing as the writers ostensibly imagine it to be. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Wes Anderson transports his arch, pristine, melancholic sensibility to India, where three estranged brothers meet after their father's death and hop a train in a quixotic attempt to heal their spiritual wounds. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: The Darjeeling Limited works best when the level of artifice is at its highest and most overt. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Hit and miss, but its tone of lyric melancholy is remarkably sustained. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: There's [Anderson's] usual goofy celebration of silent dark-eyed melancholics and shaggy oddballs, of absurdist realities and blindingly unexpected insights. Taken as a whole, it's incontrovertible evidence of Anderson's own free-wheeling talent. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: Apart from having thus created the first road-picture homework assignment, Anderson isn't breaking new ground here. But he and his actors appear to be having a larkish good time. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: 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 that is dependent on lame running jokes. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: At a stage in [Wes] Anderson's career when he should be moving on, he is instead circling back. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Unstintingly fussy, vain and self-regarding. But it is also a treasure: an odd, flawed, but nonetheless beautifully handmade object as apt to win affection as to provoke annoyance. You might say that it has sentimental value. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: With more style than substance, the story is so thin it evaporates like a puff from a hookah. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Brothers and other strangers ride The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson's captivating road movie that views life as a Great Train of Being. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: An easy movie to admire but more difficult to like. Technically and thematically, there's a lot in The Darjeeling Limited to arrest the attention. Emotionally, there's a void. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: A better film [than Life Aquatic], warmer, more engaging, funnier and very surrounded by India, that nation of perplexing charm. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The magically compelling Darjeeling Limited strikes me as the fullest blossoming yet of Anderson's talents as a total filmmaker. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Anderson is still a maddeningly cool filmmaker. He's remote from his characters, which makes him remote from his movies. There's also a way in which he uses race as a novelty, suggesting an assertively white-kid view of the world. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: 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. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Maybe Anderson needs to shoot someone else's screenplay, to get outside his own head for a while and into another's sensibility. It's telling that his funniest and liveliest recent work was a commercial for American Express. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The Darjeeling Limited is a step toward maturity for Anderson, too. His visual ideas are still overcalculated and the tone is often precious, but emotionally he seems to have expanded. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Dysfunctional families are as common on screen as off, but director Wes Anderson has a flair for making his clans seem bizarrely unique and yet recognizable too. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The movie runs deepest when the brothers finally deal with their baggage, both real and metaphysical. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: For all Anderson's pleasing, refreshing auteur tendencies, the overwhelming feeling delivered by 'The Darjeeling Limited' is of frustration, deja vu and little progression. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: It is a delight to look at, with its vibrant colors, iconic images and exotic setting, and the film has a meandering feel that captures the sense of trekking across India. Read more

Alissa Simon, Variety: Here, as in his two prior outings, Anderson's arch, highly artificial style gets in the way of character and emotional development, rendering pic piquant rather than profound. Read more

Nathan Lee, Village Voice: A companion piece to Tenenbaums more than a step in new directions, Darjeeling is a movie about people trapped in themselves and what it takes to get free... Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: The Darjeeling Limited has its charms, chief of which is watching three terrific actors evince with unforced ease the rewards and resentments of brotherhood. Read more