I think COVID-19 hit writer/director Wes Anderson especially hard. The importance of ceding control has informed some of his pre-2020s movies, including Rushmore and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. However, his first movies filmed since March 2020, Asteroid City and now The Phoenician Scheme, seem especially fixated on this concept, not to mention more acutely aware than ever how finite existence is. "I still don't understand the play," an Asteroid City character remarks in one of its final scenes, "Doesn't matter," his director responds, "Just keep telling the story."
It’s a beautiful moment that feels akin to Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel ending providing vessels for the writer/director’s pessimistic and optimistic outlooks on the future. In this case, one could read this Asteroid City exchange as Anderson expressing the befuddlement we all feel over this ongoing health crisis. Simultaneously, he’s also reassuring himself “keep telling the story.” Keep making art in the face of the unthinkable. You don’t need to understand or control everything to find peace or fulfilling creativity in this life.
Perhaps I’m just reading too much into Anderson ruminating on themes he’s previously explored. However, The Phoenician Scheme’s wacky incorporation of similar thematic territory does make me wonder. We’re all processing the horrors of 2020s existence in different ways. Maybe these two films are Anderson unpacking forcible reminders regarding how little control any of us have, including play directors and rich souls like Phoenician Scheme protagonist Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro).
The latest in a long line of Wes Anderson crummy dads, Korda is embarking on a major project that will forever change Phoenicia. To realize his ambitions, though, he needs co-financing from wacky folks like sibling business masters Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston), Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed), and sea captain Marty (Jeffrey Wright), among others. This ceaselessly controversial figure is dogged by assassins, rumors that he murdered all his ex-wives, and a gaggle of business tycoons bent on destroying Korda's plans.
Right after a near-death experience involving an airplane crash, Korda reaches out to his nun daughter Sister Liesl (Mia Threapleton). He's dubbed her the sole heir to his estate, though this loyal servant of God has bitter feelings about her absent father. There's no time to immediately process those emotions, though. Price gauging has led to a significant deficit in funding for Korda's project. Now, Korda, Liesel, and tutor Bjørn Lund (Michael Cera) are off on a whirlwind journey to meet the various eccentric investors and secure desperately needed funds. Bullets and shouting matches are always flying wherever Korda goes. Perfect time, then, for some father/daughter reconciliation.
I’m a softy for Wes Anderson movies. That’s partially because Fantastic Mr. Fox blew my mind wide open back in November 2009 as a budding movie geek. However, it’s also because of the masterfully complicated tones he weaves. That magic trick of Anderson uncovering such richly potent pathos in the world of Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Rushmore, and other films never ceases to dazzle me. The Phoenician Scheme can’t help but register as weaker Wes Anderson simply because of its more uniform tone. Something like Asteroid City balanced devastating poignancy with Adrien Brody making delightful “ba-da-ba-da-ba-da” noises while miming beating up a punching bag. Scheme, meanwhile, is all silliness all the time.
This title’s visual instincts also aren’t nearly as ambitious as Anderson’s last three live-action works, City, The French Dispatch, and Hotel. Whereas Dispatch’s imaginative imagery had enough creativity to randomly burst out a hand-drawn animated segment at the drop of a hat, Scheme adheres to more limited visual impulses. Even its Ingmar Bergman/Powell & Pressburger-inspired monochromatic digressions into the afterlife aren’t super idiosyncratic in the pantheon of cinematic visions of Heaven. All that said, living up to The Grand Budapest Hotel's legacy is a tremendous bar for any film (Anderson-directed or otherwise). On its own merits, The Phoenician Scheme is a consistently hilarious exercise with infinitely more visual polish than most summer 2025 movies.
Many of those hearty laughs come from two cast members who’ve somehow never trampled into feature-length Wes Anderson movies before 2025. Michael Cera and Richard Ayoade are Scheme’s standouts without question. Anderson and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel instantly wring laughs out of the former actor in one of Scheme's earliest sequences simply through having Cera sit awkwardly in the back corner of a vast wide shot. Cera’s body language has always been a gift and the way he sits as Bjørn Lund reflects that gift even when he looks like a speck in a gargantuan tableau. Plus, his character's silly Norwegian accent with such precisely goofy mispronunciations is also a riot.
Ayoade, meanwhile, is a hoot juxtaposing his famously buttoned-up voice with a Communist revolutionary fighter. The dissonance of a man constantly wielding a powerful gun while also emphasizing the virtues of the pamphlets he and his followers carry is utter comedic magic in Ayoade’s hands. Inspired casting courses all throughout Phoenician Scheme's runtime, including having Hanks and Cranston show up as crotchety money men who can dunk you on the basketball court. Watching talented actors throw caution to the wind and revel in farcical caricatures proves consistently hysterical here. It helps that, like Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Phoenician Scheme's storytelling scope doesn’t linger on one character for long.
Much like Popstar realizing Conner4real and his companions would get grating if they stuck around on-screen too long, Scheme keeps its bustling script moving so that its oversized figures don’t overstay their welcome. You're left craving even more Jeffrey Wright or Willem Dafoe as a Heavenly lawyer/angel rather than wishing Anderson cut more comedic darlings in the editing room. The only ones who are constantly on-screen are del Toro and Threapleton playing the central fractured father/daughter duo.
They’re both terrific, particularly del Toro. This gifted performer is so often pigeonholeed into intimidating villainous roles. It’s a hoot seeing him all gussied up as the kind of oblivious idiot George Clooney played in early Coen Brothers movies. Del Toro sells the weariness behind Korda’s eyes, while his dramatic sensibilities make the character’s accentuate the hilariousness of his bizarre words and body language.
All these heightened yuks occupy a glorious visual terrain overseen by Anderson, but not his go-to cinematographer Robert Yeoman. Instead, Bruno Delbonnel lensed this feature, though both his meticulous framing and use of a 1.47:1 aspect ratio (the latter harkening back to similarly cramped aspect ratios deployed on Asteroid City and Grand Budapest Hotel) clearly harken back to Yeoman’s sensibilities. Anderson and Delbonnel make Phoenician Scheme a feast for the eyes, particularly in how all that exceptionally detailed staging informs terrific visual gags. Just the way certain side characters lurk in the back or middle of a frame sent me into a giggling fit.
Costume designer Milena Canonero and production designer Adam Stockhausen extend Phoenician Scheme’s sharp visual sensibilities with their colorful contributions. There’s a pleasing emphasis on green and blue throughout the latter’s work making for an interesting contrast with a story focused on bureaucrats, money, and sleazy affairs of man. After all, green and blue are colors associated with the natural world. Is the intrusion of these hues in so many pockets of Phoenician Scheme indicating how Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda and his comrades will never really “control” the world no matter their wealth or grand ambitions?
Even if it’s not indicative of that theme, those greens and blues are sure pretty witness on the big screen. Similarly, maybe the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak indeed informed Wes Anderson’s renewed emphasis on letting go of control in his recent works. If it didn’t, though, then at least emphasizing that thematic motif resulted in another fun comedy (albeit one that’s nowhere near a masterpiece as Asteroid City). In a summer moviegoing season full of disgracefully choppy editing and fan-service, Wes Anderson’s reliably entertaining (not to mention visually stunning) sensibilities are more appreciated than ever....especially since he brought Michael Cera along for this ride.