Wes Anderson will have been directing movies for three decades next year, and hasn't much changed his distinctive approach. Hyper-stylized set design, retro technology and pastel color palettes, creatively linear camerawork, and a recurring cadre of actors are all trademarks that have spawned TikTok trends and photography styles. But where his early works like Bottle Rocket (1996) and Rushmore (1998) felt distinctly human, and subsequent all-time greats like The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) dealt gracefully with complex themes of imperfect families and children growing up, Anderson has lost that touch more recently. His newest, Asteroid City (2023), was stylistically "too Wes" for this reviewer, and its story's spaceships, aliens, and play-within-a-movie felt untethered from any real-world concerns here on Earth. 

Fortunately, The Phoenician Scheme pulls Anderson back from his orbit to some semblance of reality (even though the challenges faced by its characters are still generally overwrought and forgettable). And with the director's lavish attention to detail and some fresh faces in his cast, it's more worth a watch than his prior several films.

The film opens on its protagonist, the batty billionaire Zsa-Zsa Korda (played by a perpetually sullen-looking Anderson favorite Benicio del Toro), piloting his own aircraft to survive an assassination plot. He's used to attempts on his life; being a cutthroat industrialist trying to build an autonomous business region in the Middle East creates many enemies. But when a shadowy group of government operatives successfully inflate the cost of building materials (perhaps with reciprocal tariffs?), Zsa-Zsa's whole scheme to build his Phoenician empire becomes at risk. He alights on two parallel strategies to salvage his master plan.

First, he reaches out to his estranged sole daughter, nun-in-training Liesl (played with funnily posh skepticism by Mia Threapleton, Anderson-cast newcomer and daughter of Kate Winslet). Where Zsa-Zsa is too much a target of assassins, enemy governments, and all sorts of unscrupulous characters, the business would be safer in the relatively unassuming hands of Liesl. She resists initially, but seemingly feeling like she owes her father something, she agrees to stick around and explore the option. 

Second, Zsa-Zsa draws up some back-of-the-envelope calculations for how he can fill his budget via emergency capital infusions from the project's investors. Because of the hare-brained logic of his revenue-generation scheme (and its reliance on slave labor and other immoral tactics), he has to mislead these investors a fair bit, resorting to lies of omission, proposals of marriage, and suicide-bomb murder threats. At each stage, Zsa-Zsa's helpful secretary Bjørn (a hilariously Swedish-accented Michael Cera) supports his boss and increasingly falls in love with Liesl. Whether the trio will raise the money, and how they'll navigate Zsa-Zsa's complicated web of family members and business associates, is an open question. 

With its convoluted and conspiratorial plot, plus a laundry list of supporting characters to be met by an older man and his young companion cum mentee, The Phoenician Scheme's closest spirtual successor within the director's body of work is The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Compared to Anderson's magnum opus, it has big shoes to fill, and doesn't get close to all the way there. In particular, Zsa-Zsa's industrialist cynicism is much more alienating than the better film's Monsiuer Gustave H., and Liesel is less energetic and likable her counterpart Zero. Moreover, their circuitous plan to scam other wealthy investors out of their money is a far less sympathetic aim than a framed man proving innocence and a boy falling in love with a girl. The Phoenician Scheme's politics are also less compelling or timely than those of The Grand Budapest Hotel; while the latter set a celebration of professional excellence against the icy and prescient backdrop of an encroaching fascist regime, the former instead cozies up to, and perhaps even admires, the weaselly methods of tycoons while framing government investigators as meddling antagonists. Add to that the strange and inconclusive thoughts on family (as we meet a cousin and brother and uncle and a messy and distracting background), and Anderson's latest doesn't stick its messages for a landing.

But not every movie is fated to be great, and The Phoenician Scheme is still enjoyable. Many of Anderson's recurring cast members, like Jeffrey Wright, Rupert Friend, Bryan Cranston, and Tom Hanks, are friendly faces and good actors, and it's fun to find them along Zsa-Zsa's journey. (Others, like Bill Murray and Benedict Cumberbatch, prove more a distraction than they're worth; in the most painful example, it's too much a tease to see F. Murray Abraham on an angelic jury and then have him deliver no lines!) Much of the humor works well, including when one character reveals a true identity (and new accent), or when guerillas attempt a revolution in a French nightclub. Religiosity throughout the film starts as a gimmick but seems to be taken seriously by the end, which brings a needed gravitas to Anderson's flippant tone. And throughout it all, frequent collaborator Alexandre Desplat's terrific score stylishly meshes glockenspiel-rich original compositions with classics from Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky. 

The Phoenician Scheme doesn't come close to touching Wes Anderson's greats, but it doesn't reach the recent lows to which we've become accustomed, either. And that's a step in the right direction.