Movie Review: 'The Phoenician Scheme'

Anderson, and then some

From MeierMovies, May 19, 2025

Something extraordinary happened to me while writing this review. After staring at my empty screen for an hour, I finally hit upon what I thought was a unique idea: I will compare Wes Anderson, a maximalist, to the great Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, a minimalist.

But when I finished, a strange familiarity washed over me. So I checked my review of Anderson’s The French Dispatch, from 2021. To my astonishment, I found an identical twin, down to adjectives and punctuation.

Do I have dementia? Perhaps. But a better explanation might be I’ve simply run out of things to say about Anderson.

Maybe the acclaimed writer-director can relate, as he seems to have run out of things to say too, or at least new ways to say them. His plots are usually different, for sure. But with The Phoenician Scheme, he has been reduced to a cookie cutter. He’s the type that produces those tasty, colorful, sprinkly Christmas treats everyone enjoys each December, the ones shaped like trees and Santas. But they are no longer original. Scheme is admittedly more fun than the dry-as-dust Asteroid City. But it still feels like just another Anderson film, no more, no less.

With this new 1950s-era adventure-espionage-comedy, Anderson has again assembled an astonishing cast. In lead roles, Benicio del Toro and relative newcomer Mia Honey Threapleton (Kate Winslet’s daughter) are solid. Del Toro clearly relishes the role while Threapleton has mastered the Anderson deadpan. He plays Zsa-Zsa Korda (an eccentric billionaire with a convoluted plan to industrialize and modernize “Phoenicia,” or the Middle East) while Threapleton is his estranged daughter who gives up her nunnery life to help her dad. Together they thwart death plots, negotiate international finance and discover the meaning of family – or something like that, as the often incomprehensible plot (from a story by Anderson and frequent collaborator Roman Coppola) exists mostly to pad Anderson’s whimsical art direction and comedic setups.

Except for Michael Cera, who steals the show as a supposedly Swedish tutor to Korda’s kids, the rest of the film is a long parade of cameos. We get Tom Hanks, Riz Ahmed, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham and, of course, Bill Murray, as God, in an emotionally phoned-in role.

Speaking of Murray – that most regular of Anderson regulars – he, Dafoe and Abraham appear only briefly in repeating scenes, shot in black and white, depicting the afterlife, following Korda’s numerous scrapes with death. These surreal segments have great potential but, like most of the movie’s other scenes, are overstuffed, rushed and relegated to just another piece of miscellany from Anderson’s fertile yet cluttered cranium.

Among the supporting cast, only Cumberbatch, as Korda’s half-brother, the man who could make or break the scheme, has much to do. The other actors add only superfluous charm. That’s fine for farce, but except for some well-choreographed sight gags, the film is neither consistently funny nor engaging. Loaded with Anderson’s trademark irreverence and unexpressive performances, the film flounders in its own tedium. Frankly, I can’t remember the last time I was so bored by such visually imaginative, beautiful art. As Sera’s character remarks about a recent trip to a brothel, “It left me cold.”

Further using the film’s own quotes to skewer it – which I and other critics do when we have run out of intelligent critiques – let me again mention Korda. After explaining his scheme to a confidante, he is told in no uncertain terms, “This is just crazy.”

“If it works, it’s a miracle,” he responds.

The film produces no miracles – unless you are a devout Andersonphile. And if you are, please write me, or find me at a festival, or accost me on the street, and tell me what you still find so appealing about these films, nearly three decades after Bottle Rocket.

So, Mr. Anderson, I offer a challenge. Get away from your routine, rethink your storytelling and, for the love of God, try something different. Ponder a small romantic comedy, a drama, a quirky documentary or a Gothic horror. Show us something new, something we didn’t think you had inside.

© 2025 MeierMovies, LLC

The Phoenician Scheme premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and will receive a limited release in American cinemas on May 30 before going wide on June 6. For more information about the film, visit IMDB and Wikipedia.