YMMV / The Grand Budapest Hotel

• Anticlimax Boss: Played for Laughs. Jopling is a highly efficient killer who comes dangerously close to ending Gustave's life when he's hanging from a cliff, but is abruptly beaten by Zero who tackles him from behind, sending the killer falling down to his own death while uttering a comical, high-pitched yell with little fanfare whatsoever.
• Award Snub:
  • There were some who thought Ralph Fiennes was overlooked for Best Actor.
  • Many saw its loss in the Best Original Screenplay to Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) as this. Even fans of the latter tended to view its writing as one of its lesser points, and Alejandro González Iñárritu was already amply rewarded in the Picture/Director categories, whereas Screenplay was an adequate place to finally reward Wes Anderson. Made all the more egregious given how many other awards the film took in the technical categories.
• Awesome Music: Alexandre Desplat's exceedingly whimsical and catchy cimbalom-based score fits the film's mood and time period perfectly, and earned him his first Academy Award.
• Complete Monster: J.G. Jopling is the terrifying enforcer of Dmitri Desgoffe und Taxis and implied to be the poisoner of Dmitri's mother. With the legendary concierge Gustave H. framed for murder, Jopling sets about to eliminate all witnesses. Brutally killing the lawyer Vilmos Kovacs, Jopling later murders the sister of Serge X and leaves her head in a basket. Trying to kill Gustave and the young lobby boy Zero Moustafa, Jopling throttles Serge X himself before sadistically tormenting Gustave at the edge of a cliff.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The will-reading scene where Gustave learns Madame D. has left him "Boy With Apple." First Gustave gets punched out by Dmitri. Then Zero punches him out in retaliation. And then Jopling punches him out.
  • Speaking of whom, the moment where Jopling displays his capability for dog-kicking by defenestrating Deputy Kovacs' cat. It's awful, true, but also cartoonishly evil, so much so that you can't help but laugh. Ditto for him being given his dead cat to take home in a bag. What really makes it funny is Jeff Goldblum's stunned response to it.
    Deputy Kovacs: ...Did he just throw my cat out the window?
• Genius Bonus: The graphic watercolor of the two lesbians used to replace "Boy with Apple" is done in the style of Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele, who did a lot of erotic paintings, although not so much with the Girl on Girl Is Hot motif. The woman in the passive role in the painting is recognisably based, in features, pose, and stockings, on the subject of his well-known Recumbent Nude With Legs Apart.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Nazi stand-in is called the Zig-Zag Party, represented by a stylized ZZ logo. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the letter Z was used as an identifying mark on Russian vehicles and has since been used to indicate support for the war.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Egon Schiele-like painting "Two Lesbians Masturbating" is especially funny when you consider that the maid at that house is played by Léa Seydoux, famous for her role in the sexually explicit lesbian film Blue Is the Warmest Color.
  • The climax of the ski chase with Jopling and Zero becomes significantly funnier when you realize it's basically the MCU's Flash Thompson killing the Spider-Man Trilogy's Norman Osborn. Even funnier in that these two would eventually appear in the same film once again, but as their respective characters.
  • In this movie, Edward Norton plays a righteous policeman. In a later collaboration with Wes Anderson, Norton plays a gangster during the crime-themed section of the movie.
  • Adrien Brody plays Dmirti, who is after the painting "Boy with Apple" and will do whatever it takes to get it back. Fast foward to the The French Dispatch and Brody plays a character who is also after a painting (it's frescoes painted onto load bearing walls, but still) and will do whatever it takes to get it. Again. The situation even ends in violence, but this time it doesn't end with murder.
• Magnificent Bastard: Ludwig is a genial, elderly criminal locked up at Checkpoint 19 in the Former Republic of Zubrowka. When Gustave H. is incarcerated there after being framed for murder, he wins Ludwig's respect by beating up one of his gang, and is allowed to join the gang's plan to escape. Ludwig has memorized the entire layout of the prison and created numerous supplies to assist in the getaway right under the guards' noses, lacking only digging tools, which Gustave arranges to be smuggled in, inside pastries. Succeeding in their escape plan, Ludwig and his gang cheerfully bid Gustave goodbye before just as cheerfully hijacking a passing bus to make good their escape.
• One-Scene Wonder: A lot. Very few characters outside the main group get more than one or two scenes and a handful of lines, but all of them are so believable and entertaining that you barely even notice it until the film's over.
  • Tilda Swinton, one of two main female characters in the film, gets only a few lines at the beginning before her character's death initiates the plot.
  • Harvey Keitel as a tattooed prison inmate has an extended monologue, although he is seen more than once before the group escape.
  • When Gustave is in danger, who does he call? Bill Murray!
• Special Effect Failure: A lot of shots of hotel, and some outdoor shots are done with what are obviously models or painted setpieces. Likely done intentionally, as they add to the film's fanciful, retraux style. The skiing chase scene however has more noticeable CGI/bluescreen being used which lacks the old timey Stylistic Suck of the practical effects.
• Spiritual Licensee: To Spirou & Fantasio. Both are a mix of comedic or adventure stories (although The Grand Budapest Hotel eventually ends on a Darker and Edgier and a lot more depressing note than Spirou and Fantasio), in which one of the two main protagonists is a hostel bell-boy. Also, Spirou and Fantasio make heavy use of fictional countries (The Grand Budapest Hotel is set in a Ruritanian one), and was created roughly in the same era than the one in which the movie is set. And while the ambience of Spirou and Fantasio is usually much less surreal and dark than Wes Anderson's film, the comic has had several darker WW2-set albums as well.

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