Movie Review: The Phoenician Scheme

 The Phoenician Scheme (2025): ☆☆☆☆

My. Cheekbones. Were. SORE!

I can't remember when I last sat in a movie theater and laughed that hard at something. My God, Wes Anderson, you gave a hell of a fun time with this one!

Is this Wes's best installment? No. But it is definitely up there as one of his funniest! It's a very straightforward story. In short, a businessman makes his nun daughter the heir of his estate while he goes on a new journey for a new enterprise. And during this new journey, they become targets for assassins and terrorists. What this film has in store for its audience is really as simple of a plot as you need.

The shining gold star of this movie, to me, was Michael Cera as Bjourn Lund. That man was never on screen without watering my eyes, paining my stomach, and making my cheekbones as sore as can be. Just absolute, complete silliness to his character. He brings a lot of charm with his performance, but not the "woo-ing" type of charm, more of the "aw, buddy" charm.

Benicio del Toro plays an incredible lead as Zsa-zsa Korda. I know he has done it more in the past, but I have not seen him do comedies too often, but man, is he great in them!

Every time I watch a Wes Anderson film, I feel like I'm just watching a painting fly around and speak to me the whole time. I would be so pleased with myself if I had just a fraction of his artistic talent! I've truly never been let down by his work. A good friend of mine said even lower-tier Wes Anderson movies are still a great time (@zachiswach on Letterboxd)! 

Seeing this film in a packed theater with an engaging audience made me so excited to see more comedies in the theater again! What a blast of a time this film was!