Who's in It: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Angelica Huston
The Basics: Three brothers, estranged since the death of their father and emotionally wounded by their abandoning mother, travel through India on a train toward nowhere in particular, really. Their job, as dictated by the eldest brother (Wilson), is to reconnect spiritually. They accomplish this by brawling and pepper-spraying each other first. And then, somehow, accompanied by Kinks and Rolling Stones songs floating up from the soundtrack, they do it by taking care of each other, all in that slow-motion way director Wes Anderson loves so much. I love it, too, so I'm his target audience.
What's the Deal? Some longtime fans got all up in arms (well, as much as they felt like getting up in arms) over the lack of humanity in The Life Aquatic. Those people will be happy to know that this is more like a companion piece to The Royal Tenenbaums. Both Royal and Darjeeling are about well-to-do people trying to reintroduce love into a family situation that may have never had it in the first place, and so the emotional weight and dryly sweet quality of that earlier movie is back in play here. As for people who think Anderson's artificial reality is too arch or precious or self-conscious or any of those other pejoratives I see being leveled his way, I am happy to report that he has not backed down from his commitment to that sort of thing one bit. So steer clear if you think it gets in the way of storytelling.
Art-Direction and Luxury-Brand Fans, Not to Mention People Obsessed With the Futura Font (Although No One Is More Obsessed Than Anderson), This Is Your Crack: The Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton custom-made luggage in this movie is like a supporting character. And I kind of want some now. Anyway, for art direction nerds, Anderson's movies are like being given a huge catalog of very cool objects and colors and textures and places to look at. His movies, even if you think the stories are slight, are full of the joy of seeing. I could watch them with the sound off and still be completely happy.
Don't Be Late or You'll Miss: Bill Murray in a nearly wordless cameo.
Watch This First If You Can: Hotel Chevalier, a 13-minute short film starring Schwartzman and Natalie Portman that functions as a prologue to this movie. It's on iTunes, and it's free. Things that happen in this short pop up again throughout Darjeeling. If you don't watch it, you'll have no idea why Natalie Portman appears for two seconds in the last part of the feature.