The Darjeeling Limited

Recently I watched about Elizabethtown and talked about how a great film maker like Cameron Crowe, even at their worst, can still give you more than enough to enjoy their films. With The Darjeeling Limited we see a great filmmaker in Wes Anderson have his work become overly maligned due to expectations that were created by past work. In other words, the difference between Elizabethtown and Darjeeling Limited is that one former survives because it's filmmaker is too talented to make a terrible movie and the later is a great film that gets unfairly criticized for not being as good as Wes Anderson's best work.
Like all Wes Anderson films, Darjeeling presents the audience with a set of characters who all have their own particular quirks and the audience is always asked to accept these quirks without much in the form of direct explanation. Through their actions and dialogue though we learn much about these brothers who have drifted apart following their fathers sudden death one year earlier. We know Jack is a writer who "fictionalizes" family events, Peter is married with a kid on the way and Francis, the oldest, has had his head nearly crushed in an a recent accident. The three are in India on a spiritual journey set up by Francis to try and rebuild their relationship as brothers.
A lesser film at this point would pack itself full with various hijinks, stunts and cultural misunderstanding. But thankfully this is not a Robin Williams movie. Instead Wes Anderson's focus is on these brothers. Anderson takes his time letting the audience get to know these brothers as they are now before covering the events from their fathers funeral. And when those events are covered we begin to understand and relate to the full arch that represents their relationship.
The one argument against or perhaps less than appealing element to this film is the lack of a strong female character to put up against and provide some contrast to these brothers. I know this is a film my wife likes but no where near as much as I do. That's okay. By the end we are treated to a film that focuses not only on the relationship between brothers but also sons and mothers. By it's nature it is not a universal story. It's a man dramedy in every possible way and for me it works in ways that few other films can. I know some Wes Anderson fans who would hang me out to dry for saying this but this is my second favorite Anderson film. Of course, the fact that a debate regarding what Anderson's second best film is can exist should stand as a testament to the quality of films that he makes. For better or worse, it also looks like these will be the standards all future Wes Anderson films are compared to.