WPSU-header-triangles.png
Public Media for Central Pennsylvania
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations
WPSU-FM Pre-drive Challenge: Click here to help us raise $10,000 before April 15 to unlock $5,000.

'The Darjeeling Limited'

Three battling brothers, who haven't spoken in the year since their father's funeral, flail and rail and bond on a trek across India in Wes Anderson's latest comic oddity. Control-freak Francis (Owen Wilson) has brought along a secretary to provide them with daily itineraries, while angsty Peter (Adrien Brody) is intent on running away from his wife's pregnancy. Perpetually barefoot Jack (co-scripter Jason Schwartzman), meanwhile, is trying to turn a recently failed relationship into a short story.

That relationship (with Natalie Portman) is depicted not in the film itself, but in a Web flick (requires iTunes) that the filmmaker is urging everyone to see before they see Darjeeling Limited. Apart from having thus created the first road-picture homework assignment, Anderson (Rushmore, Royal Tennenbaums) isn't breaking new ground here. But he and his actors appear to be having a larkish good time — while illuminating a message that amounts to "Life's easier when you get rid of your baggage."

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags
Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.